Teacher of the Year: Educator as ‘Lead Learner’

Under a picture perfect blue sky, preceded by 56 of her state and territory Teacher of the Year peers, Sarah Brown Wessling, an Iowa high school English teacher, walked out of the Oval Office into the Rose Garden of the White House Thursday afternoon flanked by President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. The president described the 2010 National Teacher of the Year as passionate and creative, and highlighted Wessling’s innovative teaching style. He also offered the words of one of Wessling’s students, who described the experience of being in her class in glowing terms: “No discussion was fruitless, no assignment was pointless, and not one day was boring.”

Taking the podium after the president, the 35-year-old Wessling described her classroom as a place where the teacher is the “lead learner” and “the classroom walls are boundless.” The fact that she consigned her desk to a back corner of the room, she explained, “is an outward sign of an implicit philosophy that teaching must be learner-centered.”

Wessling, who teaches 10th-12th grade English at Johnston High School (enrollment 1,300), has been been in the classroom for 11 years, and at her present school for 10. This year, Wessling, the department chair since 2003, created 15 new English courses, according to President Obama. The department’s course list reads more like it comes from a college campus...