State teacher honored at White House

WASHINGTON — Standing in the White House Rose Garden on Tuesday, the eyes of Arkansas’ Teacher of the Year brimmed with tears when President Barack Obama mentioned the December shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

Alexia Weimer, a kindergarten teacher at Avondale Elementary School in the Marion School District, joined 53 other teachers from the 50 states, U.S. territories and the Department of Defense in Washington, D.C., to receive 2013 White House Teacher of the Year awards. Jeffrey Charbonneau, a high school physics and engineering teacher from Zillah, Wash., was named National Teacher of the Year and the others were honored as finalists.

Obama reminded them how a first-grade teacher huddled with students in a bathroom during the Connecticut rampage and whispered to them: “I love you.”

“In those moments, those brave teachers showed the world what they do is more than just educate kids,” Obama said. “They embrace them, and they nurture them, and they love them.”

That’s when Weimer’s eyes welled up.

“I tell my students I love them every morning, and I tell them again before they leave” in the afternoon, said Weimer, who started teaching at the school seven years ago after she earned a master’s degree at Arkansas State University.

“She leads with her heart,” said her mother, Kelly Bourisaw, who joined Weimer at the event.

Growing up in Blytheville, Weimer whittled her career aspirations down to two possibilities: elementary school teacher or president of the United States — a job with a minimum age requirement of 35.

Weimer, 30, said she doesn’t regret her choice for a moment. Just leaving school for three days, she said, while her 19 students learn about frogs and butterflies with a substitute teacher, was difficult.

Next year, she’ll be away from the classroom for even longer. As the Arkansas winner of the National Teacher of the Year program, Weimer will take a year’s sabbatical. She’ll serve on the Arkansas Board of Education in an advisory role and plans to spend time counseling education students before they take jobs in the classroom.

Weimer said she only accepted the award and the year off after she was guaranteed a position in the classroom at Avondale upon her return.

To be considered for the Arkansas honor, Weimer filled out an application, and had Avondale’s principal, Glenda Bryan, and other colleagues send letters of recommendation. The Arkansas Education Department interviewed her twice and sent observers to her classroom before giving her the award.

Weimer said one of her biggest challenges is the different “skill sets” of her students.

“Some students already know their letters and some can’t even write their name,” she said.

To overcome those differences, and to get children with different learning styles to respond, Weimer tries to make the classroom a fun place. Some students, she said, are better at learning through visualization. Some need to touch and get a hands-on appreciation for the lesson. And others learn best by listening.

It’s what Weimer and other educators call the “whole brain” approach to teaching.

At the ceremony, Weimer said she told Obama that her students voted overwhelmingly for him during their mock election, which was held about a week before the November elections.

“In all the years I’ve been there, they’ve never been wrong,” she told the president.

Weimer said Obama responded that children usually have a “natural instinct” in those kind of predictions.

In his 10-minute speech congratulating the teachers, Obama steered clear of policy pronouncements. Instead, he praised teachers for their dedication and the emotional commitment they have for their jobs.

“They’re not just filling blackboards with numbers and diagrams,” Obama said. “In classrooms across America, they’re teaching things like character and compassion and resilience and imagination. They’re filling young minds with virtues and values, and teach our kids how to cooperate and overcome obstacles.”