WORTHINGTON -- The four local candidates for 2007 Minnesota Teacher of the Year prefer talking about their colleagues rather than themselves.
They evade the spotlight, and certainly don't brag about their teaching skills. Maybe they should.
After all, Karen Beers of Murray County Central, Timothy Owen of Heron Lake-Okabena, Pat Esser of Jackson County Central and Doug Anderson of Windom are four out of just 130 educators selected from the entire state of Minnesota for candidacy.
"In many ways, I don't think I do anything that's different," said Beers, a kindergarten teacher. "I think there are many good teachers out there. I would never presume to say that I'm better than most of the teachers at my school."
All four local candidates praised their colleagues for being so supportive, and all four were surprised they'd made the state's candidate list.
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The 43rd Minnesota Teacher of the Year will be named May 6 in Brooklyn Park.
Aside from love of their profession, the four teachers are different. They teach different grades in different subjects in different schools. They have different teaching styles and different classroom objectives, too.
Esser has been teaching for 33 years, the longest of the four Teacher of the Year candidates, but all of them are classroom veterans. Owen has taught at Heron Lake-Okabena, now called Southwest Star Concept School, for 13 years. Anderson has been at Windom for 21 years, and Beers has been teaching in Slayton for 22 years.
Esser, who teaches English at Jackson County Central Middle School, came to education in a roundabout way, after he spent more than two years in the engineering program at the University of Minnesota. He went into the English program, but not education, for two years, joined the United States Air Force and later got a bachelor's degree in Russian.
Only then did Esser go back to the University of Minnesota to get a bachelor's degree in English education.
Third-grade teacher Anderson, by contrast, always knew he wanted to be a teacher, though he did take a few business classes in high school.
"Each day is always different, and there are always successes to each day," Anderson said. "There are also some frustrations, but with each day we see progress, we see smiles on faces, we see successes, we see contacts that begin to be formed and learned."
Owen sees his job teaching social studies and English to seventh- through 12th-graders as an adventure.
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"I teach a lot of junior high classes. The energy they bring makes me energetic as well," Owen said. "You can feed off that and be a little crazy with the ideas and lesson plans, and usually at that age, they're willing to try it."
Beers originally chose teaching partly because the hours allowed her to keep a similar schedule as her own children. She also likes it because it's different every day.
"They're just so ready to learn," Beers said of her kindergartners. "Everything you do is exciting to them, and they are opening to learning, and they just soak it in like a sponge."
All four teachers have different goals in mind for their students.
"My wish is that my students leave my classroom with a very positive self-esteem and self-image in regards to their capabilities," Anderson said.
Esser just wants his middle-schoolers to be able to write a clear, understandable sentence. Beers wants her kindergartners to learn to respect themselves and others.
"I think one of the stories of America's history that I want kids to know is the idea of tolerance and acceptance," Owen said.
