Nomination process starts for top teacher

If you can read this editorial, thank a teacher.

A great way to offer thanks and recognition to teachers is for local school districts to submit nominees for Illinois Teacher of the Year.

Those Who Excel nomination forms and general information are now available at www.isbe.net/those who_excel.htm, the Illinois State Board of Education’s website.

The nomination deadline is June 8, which means superintendents and administrators have more than 4 months to complete this assignment. That’s plenty of time, we’d say.

Teacher of the Year finalists will be announced in September, and the state’s top teacher is named in October.

Our editorial board started keeping an eye on the Teacher of the Year competition several ago when we realized that no teachers in the five-county Sauk Valley region had made finalist status for at least a decade.

How could that be? we thought. The region has plenty of good teachers. We reasoned the drought must be because not enough schools nominated teachers in the first place.

Shine a spotlight on the contest, we thought, and perhaps more local teachers would be nominated, and teachers and schools would have more of a chance to compete against the cream of the crop for statewide recognition.

In 2010, we were pleased when an Oregon High School Spanish teacher, Kimberly Radostits, was named one of eight finalists.

Last year, although no area teachers made the finalist category, a suburban teacher who graduated from Ashton High School captured Teacher of the Year honors. Josh Stumpenhorst is a sixth-grade teacher in Naperville known for his technology-based initiatives to help students learn.

We’d like it if a regional superintendent of schools invited Stumpenhorst to the Sauk Valley to address local teachers.

And we’d really like it if school administrators get the ball rolling now on their 2012-13 Teacher of the Year nominations.