• McAtee
      KATHARINE MCATEE
    Center Grove Elementary School
    2013-14 Teacher of the Year 
    Subject and Grade Level: Art (K-5)
     
    Years of Experience: 3
     
    To me, teaching is important because: Teachers can share their passions and loves with others. In doing this, we share what brings us solace, what brings us joy, and what makes us successful. As a teacher, one has the opportunity to open someone's life to new thoughts, new ideas, and new worlds. Teachers enable others to think for themselves. To teach is to recognize there will always been a need to learn more: that one will never "know enough".
     
    During my time in developing countries I have witnessed first hand what happens when teaching is nearly absent from society. Children fight to grow and change, but with little to no direction. Careers one would consider crucial to the progression of society, i.e. doctors, lawyers, nurses, are almost non-existent or those professionals are so behind current advances in their field that the ways in which they work are parallel to the ways of the Civil War era. Critical thinking, literacy, and even the ability to dream seem to have disappeared in these situations. When there are no teachers, a society is devastated. Individuals without teachers merely survive, fighting through the unkown with no wisdom from others.
     
    Teaching is vital to progression.