Photo courtesy of Leeping Lenses Photography.
Welcome back to Teachers in America, where we connect with real educators and ed leaders to provide practical instructional tips and talk about the latest teaching trends to help you stay on the forefront of what’s new in education.
Today we are joined by 2024 National Teacher of the Year Missy Testerman. After 30 years of teaching 1st and 2nd grade, Missy earned an endorsement to teach English as a second language. She then took on the role of K-8 ESL specialist and program director in her rural Appalachian community. In her new role, Missy has helped build bridges between cultures and is a staunch advocate for her students, families, and fellow teachers. In this episode, Missy reflects on the unique role she played beyond the classroom as a trusted figure for multilingual learners and immigrant families. Plus, she shares her tips on mentoring and maintaining joy in teaching, getting ready for the back-to-school season, and supporting multilingual learners.
A full transcript of the episode appears below; it has been edited for clarity.
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Jenn Corujo: From paper to pencil, to WIFI and AI, education is ever evolving. On this new season of Teachers in America, we’ll keep you on the forefront of what’s new. We connect with teachers and ed leaders to talk trending topics and real issues, bringing you inspiring ideas that will influence the future of your teaching.
Today host Noelle Morris sits down with 2024 National Teacher of the Year Missy Testerman. Missy serves as a K-8 English as a second language specialist and program director for her school in rural Rogersville, Tennessee. In this episode, Missy reflects on her education career and offers words of inspiration and practical advice to nurture the joy in teaching. Plus, she shares tips on teacher mentoring, getting ready for the back-to-school season, and supporting multilingual learners. Now here’s Noelle and Missy!Now, here’s Noelle and Missy!
Noelle Morris: Welcome Missy Testerman, and right out of the first minute, I want to just congratulate you for being named 2024 National Teacher of the Year. How’s it feeling?
Missy Testerman: Thank you. I appreciate that. Well, it has been a whirlwind. It has been a whirlwind since the announcement on April 3rd. Since that time, I’ve been to the White House and met the First Lady of the United States and the President of the United States. So it is quite busy, but I am thrilled and honored and appreciative of the opportunity to be the 2024 National Teacher of the Year.
Noelle: So, what led to this accomplishment? This will give our listeners a chance to get to know you as a teacher and a little bit about your journey and how you got nominated.
Missy: Okay, so a little bit of backstory and we’ll just start at the local level. My school did not participate in the Tennessee Teacher of the Year program until two years ago. So, the first year I was on the selection committee for that. The next year I was nominated and chosen to be my school’s representative for Tennessee Teacher of the Year, and I made it into being a finalist for the state of Tennessee.
There were nine finalists, and then last August 2023, I was named the Tennessee Teacher of the Year. Once that happens, and you are your state or your territory’s Teacher of the Year, you go through an application with CCSSO, which is the Council of Chief State School Officers, and you submit some essays and a video, and then they narrow that down to four finalists. I was announced as a finalist for National Teacher of the Year in January 2024. In February, I went to Washington DC along with the other three finalists who were Joe Nappy from New Jersey, Christie Todd from Georgia, and Kat Walker from Alaska. We went to a two-day in-person interview setting, and then in April 2024, I was named as the 2024 National Teacher of the Year.
Noelle: Wow. So, what are your students saying and what is happening in your classroom and your connection to your students and community that led your school to select you as their Teacher of the Year?
Missy: My students have been incredibly supportive. Although, I have one student, when the four national finalists were announced, the state of Tennessee held a really big ceremony in my school where it was announced in front of the entire school.
I teach in a pre-K–8 school in rural Tennessee. We have around 650 students. And my school went crazy, of course. But after it was over, I was talking to our state education commissioner, and I had one of my fourth graders come up and she asked if I were to be selected as the National Teacher of the Year, did that mean that I would have to leave our school? And my heart kind of sank for just a moment and I tried to talk through it and that we’d talk about it later. But that, yes, if I was chosen, I would be gone, but I would come back. So right in front of our commissioner, she says, “Well, I hope maybe you’re just a loser so that you can stay here.”
She was already thinking ahead that she didn’t want me to leave. And my children, my students that I refer to as my children, they are excited. There is a little trepidation though, just because I’m a constant in their life. They’re not sure what it’s going to look like if I’m not there in terms of our regular routine. I feel like I’m their comfort if something goes wrong during the day, they’ll come to my room. Much like you would your mom or your dad, just wanting reassurance. But they are confident, and they are wonderful, and they will be just fine and well taken care of.
Noelle: Also, in my notes, it says 30 years into your career you decided, “Oh, I’m going to get my ESL certificate.” What prompted that?
Missy: I did teach 30 years in the general classroom. Our school’s ESL teacher was one of my dearest school friends and she came to me at the beginning of the 21–22 school year, and she said, don’t tell anyone yet, but I’m going to move at the end of the year.
My husband’s taking a job in Middle Tennessee and this woman had built our ESL program. Before we had had a part-time ESL teacher, but when she came, she built the program and just had it in amazing shape. But more importantly, she became our ESL’s family’s resource person. She was more than their teacher.
She was like an advisor. And instantly when I found out she was leaving, my heart sank, not just for me because she was my friend, but for those families, I didn’t know who would advocate for them and who would take care of them. The very next day I got a group email from the Tennessee Department of Education that went out to every teacher currently teaching in the state of Tennessee, and it offered a free pathway.
It’s called the Grow Your Own Program. It offered a pathway to add an endorsement in a high-need area. And that year it was math, English as a Second Language, or special education. So, I went to my director and asked that I be allowed to do that. Now, keep in mind, I’m not young. I was 50 at that time.
I’m a digital immigrant, not a digital native. And the difference is that everything was online. But the State of Tennessee covers all the costs of the tuition: the materials, they even pay for you to take the Praxis exam that will help you gain licensure. So, I secretly enrolled. No one knew except my husband and my director, and everything was going great until the first night that I had to post an assignment.
Now, my daughter was a junior at the University of Tennessee. She has no idea this is going on. And they use all of these digital platforms now to post assignments. So, I completed the assignment. I was waiting for the window to open to upload it, and I couldn’t get the platform to work. So, at 11:40 at night, I called her in a panic because it was due before midnight. And her first question is, not sure I’ll help you. It was, why are you on Blackboard? I was like, it doesn’t matter. Just help me. So, then I had to tell her, but I didn’t want anyone to know at that time just because I’d been in the general classroom so long and I still wasn’t entirely sure it was the right thing to be doing. But I completed the coursework, took the Praxis, and took over doing this job at the end of the year. And I’ve not had one regret. I absolutely love teaching my students and engaging with their families.
Noelle: So, I personally think your best friend told you first on purpose, because she probably knew in your heart, you’d be thinking about how are we going to keep this going? So how serendipitous that you got that email. What were you the most, not hesitant, but nervous about connecting with your learners versus how you had connected within your general ed classroom?
Missy: I was very fortunate. I had taught almost every single student in our ESL program who had come through first or second grade when I was teaching first or second grade. I was just the teacher who had them every year. So, I was already very vested in their families. I considered their moms to be my friends, so I wasn’t really hesitant about that.
My biggest hesitation was disappointing people in our community who assumed that I was going to be there to teach their second grader, if that makes sense. And so, the whole year, I would hear kids say, I want to be in your room. I want to be in your room next year, knowing full well that I wasn’t going to be in my room next year. That was probably the biggest thing. And, plus at my age, making a change was a little scary. But I’ve always told every student I’ve ever taught, plus my own children, we have to be lifelong learners. We have to all continue to learn things along the way. But when it was time for me to be the one actually practicing that, it was a little bit harder to accept.
Noelle: How amazing that you took that opportunity. What was the first thing you learned about your learners that you didn’t know about them when you taught them in general ed, but that you were getting to see, combining what you had done in your certification to what was happening in real time?
Missy: I suppose for me, the biggest shock was just how much they leaned on the ESL teacher as almost their school parent, you know? When I was in the general classroom, I felt like I took care of every need they had. I was, they’re taken care of all day, they always feel reassured.
I was sort of shocked, when I would have those little visitors just, you know, I forgot my field trip paper. It’s on my counter. I’m bringing it tomorrow. Do you think I’m in trouble? I was really shocked at how many of those little fires that she had fought all day. She never mentioned them. She never made a big deal of them. But a lot of what I do are taking care of those small things like that, that come up or occasionally . . . a couple of weeks ago I was in class and I got a phone call from one of my parents, and they need to return to their home country because the grandfather is really sick, but the child’s passport is getting ready to expire.
The mom wasn’t sure how to get an official copy of the birth certificate. So, a lot of the things that I do are not just teaching. They’re more of community advocacy or resource type things. Knowing what’s out there, what’s available. A lot of times I’ll have things like, I’ll have a child come to me and say, I want to play sports, but I need a physical.
We don’t know how to do that. And so a lot of times I call and make doctor’s appointments. I go to doctor’s appointments sometimes if there’s a language barrier. I was shocked by how many duties like that that she did in addition to teaching that she never really talked about. She just did them because they needed to be done and because she cared enough about the students and their families to do them.
Noelle: What did you do to build that trust? Had that already been an automatic expectation because of the teacher before? And a question I’d love to add into there is what challenges have you come across being an advocate and support for multilingual learners and immigrant families, especially in rural Tennessee?
Missy: That’s a great question. For the first part of that, the fact that I had been their teacher in the past and in some families, I’d had multiple children. They had three kids. This was child number three. So, we had a good relationship. I also think that the ESL teacher before me had laid that foundation and she had let them know Ms. Testerman’s going to do all the things that I did. She is your resource. She is the person to contact. And so, I think in my case, the trust was already there. Now, when I get a new family in a lot of times it is a little harder to build the trust just because a lot of times these families have not had someone they could trust.
Sometimes it takes me a little longer, but I just keep offering the help or sometimes I do things unsolicited that I know they need, and I think that helps build the trust. But perhaps the hardest part of the job for me is that sometimes you find out that not everyone has the same heart that you do. That not everyone sees my students’ multilingualism as a super power, or that they don’t understand that having two languages is an asset, not a deficit.
Or even worse, that they harbor some ill will. That has been difficult for me to deal with in the beginning. I handled a lot of those situations incorrectly. That doesn’t solve anything. I’ve learned that a lot of times if I let things roll off my back, but still absolutely advocate for my students 100% of the time, but that I don’t take those things personally toward me, that it makes it easier for the student, most importantly, and it makes it easier for me.
Luckily, the network of people who teach multilingual learners is amazing. There’s only one of me in my school, but I know others in other districts, and they have embraced me and become my support system. Within my own building, I have several people that I know care and love my students and their families just as much as I do. And that’s also very, very reassuring.
Noelle: Do you get to see your advocacy transition to agency as you watch that child go from second grade, fourth grade, to middle school?
Missy: That’s honestly the best part of all. Last year I had an eighth grader who did some on-the-spot translation for me. Meaning if I had a new family show up, there aren’t many translators in Rogersville, Tennessee, to be honest. And finding one takes time to schedule and coordinate. And so, if I have a family show up, who needs to register a first grader, I went to eighth grade. I pulled her out and she did the translation for me, but she told me something that has stuck with me. She said, “I felt so happy being able to use my Spanish to help those people and to help you.” And so, I feel like that gave her another voice, that the fact that she is multilingual is an asset that’s going to be able to help people. She’s in high school now, and I ran into her not long ago and she told me a story of walking by the office. No one asked her to help. She saw a family there who was trying to register a student, and she just took it upon herself to go up and ask them if they needed help. And then she helped walk them all the way through the registration process. She made friends with the new student and made sure that that young lady was taken care of throughout the day until she kind of picked up some friends and so forth. But that may have been one of my absolute proudest moments, just to see that she saw that the things that I do for my students, that they’re able to do for other people. There are so few diverse cultures in my community that we don’t have a sub-community for them, if that makes sense. Like there’s not a separate grocery store they can go to, like you’d find in an urban area. To go to church, my families go 35, 40 minutes to find a church service in their language. So just to see her reach out and take that responsibility on and to view her language as something that can help other people, just in my heart, so much good.
Noelle: What are you deciding or what have you decided is going to be your platform for the year that you are out speaking and representing teachers across the country?
Missy: I feel like mental health will be part of it, but the core of my advocacy for this year, what I would like to see happen, is I would like for America’s teachers to realize that they are the experts in the classrooms. The policies that we have to follow are made by people who are not educational experts. They don’t spend time in classrooms every day, but teachers have to speak up about the challenges that we have. They also have to share the triumphs. I feel like teachers do a great job of sharing triumphs, and I’m using myself as an example. I always told about the great things that the kids did in my classroom because I was really proud of those. What I wasn’t always honest about were the challenges and the problems that I saw and what I needed to have, to help support those students so that things could get better. And I feel like that the time for that is now. We have to let others know what our real challenges are, and we have to be honest about them and what we need to take care of those in order to move things forward for the good of our students.
Noelle: Earlier, we spoke to Secretary Cardona and his ABC’s, Agency, Better working conditions, Competitive wages. Listening to his passion, his commitment, how would you help teachers understand what federal government’s looking to do? What’s your advice to understand policy in your state? To be able to speak to the challenges, wouldn’t you agree teachers need to bring that back to policy and speak directly to that?
Missy: Yes, I do. I think a lot of times everyone’s quick to blame the federal government because it’s the farthest away. Most of the policies that mandate what go on in our classrooms are made either at the local level within your district or at the state level. So, I feel like a lot of that advocacy, you are exactly right. It needs to be delivered to those venues.
Secretary Cardona’s agenda, so to speak, in terms of what he would like to see happen in Education Across America is in line with every teacher that I know. These are things that teachers want, and teachers support. So, the disconnect comes somewhere between that and local and state policy. I don’t think that any legislature sets out necessarily to punish schools or that your local school board makes decisions to be punitive. I think that there are well-intentioned attempts at coming up with good policies, but when they don’t have input from teachers about the reality of what things look like or what’s going to happen, sometimes there are disastrous consequences.
Noelle: What is something that a year from now, when you come back to your classroom, how are you going to feel that you had a successful year? Like what’s the top three things you’ve put on here? Like, I am hoping these three things will happen.
Missy: I am hoping, number one, that teachers, more teachers, find their voice and they begin to speak up and be honest about our challenges. Number two, I hope that we continue to bring attention to mental health so that we’re making strides that improve things, not just for the sake of education, but for the sake of society.
Because our students are eventually going to leave the school system. They’re going to be out in society as a whole, and that’s something we need to remedy in order to enable them to have a good future. I also think that we absolutely have to address the idea of teacher retention and teacher recruitment through raising and elevating teacher pay to rival that of other professions. Teachers who are just coming out of a teacher prep program with a teaching degree earn on average 24% less than any other professional field that college students come out of. So, we have teachers who are coming out of college prep programs, but they’re taking other jobs because they can make more money. I was talking with the dean of a college of education at an institution in my state, and he was telling me how what he considered to be the best and brightest pre-service teacher in their program had already accepted a job with a convention center, booking conferences and things like that because she was going to start out making $65,000.
Teachers in my state who’ve taught 25, 30 years don’t make $65,000. The reality is this, we’ll never see that young lady, no matter how talented she is, most likely in a classroom. That is something that we have to address. You know, a lot of times teachers teach a few years, their children get older, their family expenses change, and then they leave the classroom to take a job in another field to help support their family.
Those are things, if we’re going to keep our best and brightest and recruit our best and brightest, we have to address that pay that’s kind of the elephant in the room. Teaching is a passion. I 100% believe that. But as someone who is on this side of life, I have two kids who have made it through college. I have one going to grad school. But the reality is that passion and loving your job don’t always take care of your family. And we have to address that.
Noelle: That’s so fair. I mean it’s fair to state so eloquently in the reality and not see that the teacher who went through college and have an education degree realized I got bills. I need to make a fair living. So, it’s back-to-school season. I’m going ask you, what’s your advice for that year five teacher? Because it’s year three to five, you start getting restless.
Missy: That’s a great question. A lot of times people want to know what my advice is for new teachers and that three- to five-year stretch. I remember being there myself. You’ve done it long enough that you’re not new, but you’ve not done it well enough that it’s automatic. You’re still having to work really hard at it because teaching is hard and it’s constantly changing. My advice is to continue to seek out mentors. You’re not a new teacher, but you still need and crave guidance. We all do. But at the same time, use that wisdom that you’ve accumulated in the last three to five years and pass that along to someone behind you. Someone who’s brand new in year one, or that high school student who’s enrolled in the teaching as a profession course at the high school, who wants to come shadow you.
Because I feel like that when you mentor someone, you also unlock this passion for education, that there’s a very small market for that. Most people don’t really want to hear about your passion for education. But if you have someone coming into your classroom who wants to be a teacher, or someone who is a new teacher, you passing along what you know helps not only you, it helps not only that person, it helps recharge your fire as well. I would also tell them to relax a little more. I laugh at this story on myself. I had the best mentor ever, and about year three, we were talking about something, and she pointedly said, "You know I love you, but you need to chill out." Because I was still stressed about every single thing. I thought every lesson needed to be perfect.
If I did something wrong, I was beating myself up. I was offended when she told me that, but now I see what she was saying. If you try to maintain that constant perfectionism, everything has to be perfect, every lesson is basically scripted for perfection, you’re going to burn yourself out.
But most importantly, your students are not going to have that joy of laughing with you when funny things happen. I’m embarrassed to tell you, I was that teacher the first few years. It didn’t matter what marvelous thing came up in the course of the lesson, I just kept going because I had planned what we were going to do, and we were going to do that. And it’s just experience. But I would also tell that person in years three to five, chill out just a little bit. Enjoy your students. Enjoy those moments that come up.
Noelle: Yeah. Take all the why questions, you know. Let them have that moment like, oh, you are just going to drive us in this direction for a little bit. And then we’ll come back. I love that. Missy, I have one more question for back-to-school season, what are one to three of your go-to strategies that you could start in the first three weeks of school?
Missy: The first one are routines. That one’s so old, but it’s so true. Establish routines because those make students, no matter how old they are, feel secure. And I feel like good teachers have routines for almost everything. I think it’s easier to start out more controlled and to loosen up than to start out being everyone’s best friend on the very first day of school.I can be their best friend in May, just as well as I can in August, but I feel like I’m going to get a lot more done if I don’t start out in August as being their best friend.
And this one was hard for me. You don’t have to teach everything in August. I feel like sometimes I started the school year thinking that it was an absolute sprint from August to May when the reality is it’s more like a long sustained, purposeful marathon. But those would be, I suppose, my top three: routines, you don’t have to teach it all, and there’s a time when you can loosen up a little bit later during the year.
Noelle: Such great strategies. So, let’s end this with, why teaching?
Missy: Teaching will always be worthwhile. There will always be joy in teaching and I know there are fields where people make a lot more money than I do, but there is still joy in teaching.There will always be joy in teaching and the relationships that you’re able to form with students and their families are something that get you through the best of times, the worst of times. I can think of no job that is any more enjoyable than teaching something to someone that they need to know or something that they need to take into their future to be successful. So, if you’re out there, no matter if you’re 18, if you’re 22, in college, in high school, whether you’re 40 and you think, "I can’t work on Wall Street forever, the stress is killing me, maybe I would like to teach," explore those options, figure out a way to make it happen. A lot of states have pathways for people to come in from second careers and to use the experience that they had in their first career to teach. Look those up. Call your Department of Education in your state and see what’s out there for you, because there very well may be a pathway that could put you in a classroom sooner than what you’re thinking. And if you think you want to teach, you probably do want to teach.
Noelle: Woo woo. Hugs are invaluable. Aha moments will live with you forever. Thank you, Missy. This has been amazing. Thank you to our listeners. Missy, you are truly a teacher in America, making a difference.
Missy: Oh, thank you. And thank you for the opportunity to be on the podcast. I enjoyed talking to you and I appreciate you offering this for teachers. I’m a teacher who listens to podcasts while I exercise, so I understand very well the benefit of the work that you do, and I appreciate that as well.
Noelle: Well, thank you.
Jenn: If you or some you know, would like to be a guest on the Teachers in America podcast, please email us at shaped@hmhco.com. Be the first to hear new episodes of Teachers in America by subscribing on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed today’s show, please rate, review, and share it with your network. You can find the transcript of this episode on our Shaped blog by visiting hmhco.com/shaped. The link is in the show notes.
The Teachers in America podcast is a production of HMH. Thank you to the production team of Christine Condon, Tim Lee, Jennifer Corujo, Mio Frye, Thomas Velazquez. and Matt Howell. Thanks again for listening.
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