Member Accolades | Winter 2021-22

This article appeared in the Winter 2021-22 issue of The Classroom Teacher.

TCTA member wins district award for creative teaching

TCTA member Jessica Whitman was honored recently with the $1,000 Dorothy Huffman Award for Creative Teaching during a surprise presentation in her classroom at Ben Milam Elementary School in Wichita Falls ISD.

The award is given annually to a third-grade teacher in Wichita Falls ISD, and the funds can be used in the classroom however the teacher chooses.

“We’re going to do something fun for the kids, maybe a field trip of some kind,” Whitman told the Times Record News.

Ben Milam Principal Gena Ayers and other Wichita Falls ISD officials presented the award in October.

“Mrs. Whitman is an amazing teacher that refuses to let her students fail,” Ayers said in a statement from the district. “She loves on them, pumps them up, and gets them excited about math.”

TCTA member elected president of national foreign language group

TCTA member Akash Patel was recently elected as the next president of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.

The Spanish teacher at Dallas ISD’s Ignite Middle School will assume the role in 2023. The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages has a membership of more than 13,000 and presidents serve three-year terms.

Patel told KERA he’s “ready to help foreign language teachers tackle the task of making up pandemic-created academic losses, and using instructors’ newfound knowledge of teach-at-home tools like Zoom or Teams, all in an effort to shrink the globe just a little more.”