Meet 15 people who qualify as Fort Worth, Texas magazine Top Teachers in 2012.
Next to our parents - and in some cases more important than our parents - teachers shape our lives. A reader who is also a teacher suggested that we find some way to recognize the importance of teachers. The result is this list of men and women who daily toil under sometimes difficult circumstances in one of the most important jobs around. Space does not permit us to quote from the nominations, but especially moving were those from the students themselves who praised their teachers for challenging them, believing in them, attending their events when they didn't have to and treating them with respect in the classroom. Teachers selected responded to a questionnaire from us. They spoke of their love of teaching, their concerns about state regulation and funding, too little time to do the kind of job they would like to do, the problems that increasingly wired students - it's an iChild world, one said - introduce in the classroom and, in an interesting note, concern that modern students may not spend enough time outdoors doing traditional childhood activities like playing in the mud. Click HERE to nominate Top Teachers for 2013.
How We Did It
We contacted almost all private schools in the area and 20 public school districts about this project. We sent them a call for nominations and a flier that could be reproduced and solicited readers on our Web site, through social media and in the magazine. We received 1,240 nominations - many of them duplicates - from parents, other teachers and from students. Not all schools or districts were represented in the results, and some made a conscious decision not to participate officially. Once the results were tabulated, we read the nominations and selected these teachers whom we thought were excellent representatives of the profession. And we checked each with the proper school authorities to make sure that they were worthy of inclusion.
