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About Elizabeth

11/6/2019

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11/6/2019
Celebrating the Teachers Who Celebrate Me
On October 25, I had the pleasure of attending the Maryland State Teacher of the Year Gala.  It was a rare opportunity to get all dressed up and honor twenty-four of my favorite kind of people-teachers in the state of Maryland.  As one of the seven state finalists, my anxiety was high and my nerves were on edge.  Even though I did not win, I can certainly count this event as one of my favorite things so far in this whole Teacher of the Year experience, and not for the reasons that you may think. 
                As I sat at the table at Martin’s West, in a room of at least five hundred people, the room closed around me and zeroed in on my little corner of real estate toward the back of the room.  The nervousness of the procession and the announcing and the walk across the stage had settled and it was as if the whole room had shrunken and quieted to include only my perspective.  And all that was left was my people.  There was Patty Baugher, who twenty years ago took in a scared, twenty-one-year-old; a brand new teacher who was hired two days before school started, and let her know that it was going to be o.k.  I can still hear the sound of her pushing a teacher desk down the hall with her own two hands and putting it in the back of her room because no one else had arranged for a space for me. That was only the beginning of the kindness she has extended to me in our twenty-year friendship.  There was Jessica Brockmeyer and Emily Knowles.  Theirs was the number I dialed when I couldn’t see two feet in front of my car windshield through my tears when I decided it was time to move on from my first school.  When I pulled into their driveway, Jess was waiting for me on the porch, ready to listen, and the only thing Emily said as I passed her on their sidewalk was, “I will be right back.  I am getting wine and ice cream.”  They helped me work through a lot of things that night, and I will never forget that.  There were the four that make my Fab Five complete:  Becca Martinek, Kristie Smith, Kathy Thompson and Dawn Zipay.  Six months ago, they were my greatest competition; now I count them as my best professional collaboration and dearest friends.  Nothing else in my life has ever been so effortless, powerful, or special.  There were my six English department colleagues and two special education colleagues:  Megan Heller, Jenn Ball, Eliza Wagoner, Brittany Groff, Monica Malozi, Alyssa Sansalone, Sammi Brown (and Sue Andrews, in spirit).  This one is hard to put into words.  How do you qualify the relationship you have with the people who are in the trenches with you each and every day?  You have seen me cry, made me laugh; supported me, taught me and learned from me. I would not want to fight the good fight with anyone else.   There was Brad Spence, my nominator.  He is often the life in our veins at HHS; the energy, the empathy and the permission to try things and fail and learn from them.   I only believe that I deserve this because he did.  There was my very best friend, Deborah Schlehr, who is my listening ear, my sounding board, and often my voice of reason.  We have been through a lot together over the years, and our friendship has proved that distance and time cannot separate true friends.  And then there was my husband, Adam, who has carried more of the burden and responsibility of our family since I was given this honor than I could even list here.  He has done it without complaint, or guilt, or accrued debt.  He tells me he is proud of me at the exact moments that I need it, and I can always see in his eyes how much he means it.     
                When I look over this list of my people, there is one un-ignorable fact to be seen.  They are all teachers.  Every last one of them.  I have unintentionally and inadvertently surrounded myself with models in a profession in which I believe and thrive.  These people have seen me at my worst, celebrated me at my best, and loved me every step of the way in between, no matter what.  I am a better teacher, friend, woman, mother, and human being because of them.  And they are all teachers.  I don’t think that is any accident.  Because after all, isn’t that what the best teachers do for their students each and every day?  Find your people.  Learn from them, grow with them.  Never let them go.  I had the opportunity to see all of mine together in one room, which is a gift that I will never forget.