What is Master Teacher?
The Kansas Master Teacher Award will celebrate its 52th anniversary this year with the induction of seven new teachers.
Emporia State University has honored 376 teachers since the annual award was founded. According to awards committee chairman Scott Waters, Kansas Master Teachers are educators who have "served the profession long and well, and who also typify the good qualities of earnest and conscientious teachers."
Nominations come from local teacher associations, educational organizations and colleagues. A committee representing educational organizations across Kansas selects the finalists in February. The seven chosen teachers will be honored with a day of tours, seminars and receptions March 30 at Emporia State University.
Hays Daily News February has been a tough month for Lisa Colwell the past couple of years. It was Feb. 6, 2006, when her husband, Kent, was diagnosed with colon cancer, and he has been undergoing treatment ever since. The Colwells have something to look forward to this February. Lisa Colwell, in her 13th year of teaching math classes at Hays High School, has been named a Kansas Master Teacher for 2008. The awards banquet for the seven finalists this year is set for Feb. 27 at Emporia State University, which founded the Master Teacher program in 1954. And Colwell has high hopes her husband can accompany her to the celebration. Kent Colwell is supposed to have a chemotherapy treatment that day, but his wife is trying to rearrange his treatment schedule. The seven Master Teacher honorees go on the ESU campus for an activity-filled day, which culminates with that evening's banquet and awards presentations. "I heard that it's a day where you're treated like a queen," Colwell said of the activities that will include a tour of the National Teachers Hall of Fame and the One Room Schoolhouse on campus, lunch with ESU President Michael Lanevis, a seminar given by the Master Teachers and a public reception. The selection process for Kansas Master Teacher begins at the local level, where teachers are nominated for the honor, and the field is then narrowed to five finalists by ballots among members of the Hays National Education Association. The top vote getter for the district Master Teacher then is eligible to compete for Kansas Master Teacher recognition. Once a teacher wins at the district level, that means more work. There are forms and papers to fill out and requests to be made for reference letters, all in a short window of time. Colwell didn't mind she had to use part of her Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks getting all that arranged. It seemed like a small task compared to what her husband has been going through the past couple of years. "If he can do four chemo treatments during that time, I thought, 'I can do this,' " she said. Colwell said she was surprised when she won the district honor, let alone making the final seven in the state. "What an honor," she said. "I was reading the biographies of the people who won, and I'm in some pretty nice company ... a lot of teachers who have dedicated their lives to the profession." Colwell also belongs in that category, says Will Roth, assistant superintendent in charge of curriculum and instruction for USD 489. "She has been an all-star math teacher ever since she came to us," Roth said of Colwell, who taught at nearby Victoria before coming to Hays High in the mid-1990s. "She really did a lot for our school improvement process and made a huge effort in connecting our instruction with the state standards so that they were aligned and made sense for kids." The Colwells' two grown sons, Chris and Mark, both live in Arlington, Va., and Lisa Colwell was uncertain whether or not they would be able to make the trip home for the Master Teacher celebration. But Sharon Ruder, a fellow math teacher at HHS, will be there. And they have high hopes Kent Colwell will make the trip, too. "I'm hoping we can get his treatment that week pushed back at least a day," Lisa Colwell said. "I would really like for him to be able to be there."
Information Provided By:
Emporia State University
Kansas City: The Star
The Hays Daily News