National State Teachers of the Year

PROPOSED CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGE REGARDING MEMBERSHIP

Please read and consider carefully.

It has been proposed that NSTOY change the criterion for membership in the organization as follows: Any Council of Chief State School Officer (CCSSO) Teacher of the Year or recognized CCSSO state finalist from 1952 forward shall be eligible for membership in the National State Teachers of the Year organization. This proposal will be brought up for a vote at the 2009 Conference in Maine. According to the NSTOY Constitution, only members who are actually in attendance at the conference are eligible to vote. In order to assist members in making a decision, we present the following discussion regarding the pros and cons of this issue.

SPEAKING IN FAVOR OF THE PROPOSED CHANGE:

We strongly urge NSTOY to change the basis for our membership! We are proposing that NSTOY be open to all finalists in the CCSSO competition for state teacher of the year. This will vary a bit from state to state, based on the structure of the state competition. However, each state has some small group of final competitors in the selection process. We are urging this change in membership structure for the following reasons:

Currently, NSTOY has no way to expand our membership. Most other organizations can “recruit” more people to join the group, thus expanding the number of people in the group to participate in projects, become dues-paying members to expand the financial base, and to add to the vitality of the organization.

Some states already doing this. In many cases, the "finalists" have been hard at work in state organizations, such as helping put on the conferences. They do this out of a love for teaching and the joy and stimulation of being around others who take the profession so seriously. However, while they don't complain about it out loud, it sometimes comes up in very personal, quiet conversations that they feel like second class citizens, that they somehow aren't as good as the "real" teachers of the year. Our current, very limiting membership structure is the cause for this two-tiered system. Let's get this changed so everyone feels like a contributing member!
Those of us who are in favor of this proposal feel very strongly that we cannot be an elite organization. Of course, it is a very special honor to be a state teacher of the year. That will never be taken away from us. In NSTOY, we describe ourselves as representing all good teachers, not being the "best teacher" of our particular year. We are very adamant about that. We often call newspapers when reporters mistakenly write a headline that says something like, "So-and-so has been selected as the best teacher in the state." That's so offensive to us. With that in mind, how can we say that the finalists for our states wouldn't represent our state equally well? Therefore, they should be included in the organization! On any other day, someone else might have been selected, rather than us. In many states, the honor is a rotating one anyway, such as elementary one year and secondary the next. For the teachers of the year in those states, how can they say they're "better than" the other teacher? It just doesn't work that way and none of us