National Teacher of the Year

Tabatha Rosproy, age 33, Winfield, Kansas

How long have you been teaching preschool? Eleven years, so this feels like a good celebration of a decade of hard work.

And you teach in a rather unusual school. We are the first public school pre-k in Kansas housed inside a nursing home. The impact the children have on the lives of the residents is profound, as is the impact the grandparents— which is what we call our volunteers—have on my students.

Lucky kids to have dozens of grandparents! They really are. We’re big on the idea of school family as an extension of home family.

Do they learn together? Yes. We’re often working on similar skills, such as conversation and fine motor skills. So we get to target two populations with some of our teaching. I work closely with the nursing home’s activities director, and I love when our objectives overlap.

What’s your number one goal as a teacher?

I want the kids to understand that it’s important to take care of yourself, but you also have a responsibility to do that for others. That teaching of selflessness, I think, is missing in our society.

Do you ever catch yourself speaking to adults the same way you speak to preschoolers? Absolutely. My husband gets upset with me for telling him to “go potty” before we leave the house. But my friends think it’s really funny.

Rosproy is the first early childhood educator named National Teacher of the Year by the Council of Chief State School Officers.