I woke up this morning knowing that I would be traveling the majority of the day across many states to Scottsdale, Arizona for the National Teacher of the Year Conference. I started my journey by driving to Greensboro to fly to Atlanta. At the airport the security guy asked me where I was going. I explained to him about the National Teacher of the Year Conference (NTOY) and immediately his demeanor changed. He began to smile and told me had has a son in 4th grade who loves school. We continued our conversation and then he said, "tell all of the teachers thank you for what they do". It put a huge smile on my face to hear a complete stranger thanking teachers. I told him I would tell everyone that and proceeded on my journey to Atlanta.
When I arrived at the Atlanta airport I had to practically run to the gate. When I got there a lady smiled at me and asked, "Are you Darcy Grimes the North Carolina TOY?" I told her yes and she said, "I am Suzanne the TOY from Alabama!" I was so excited to meet another teacher of the year! We immediately started talking and then recognized a couple of other people in the crowd. We found Kathy from Virgina, Lauren from Georgia, and Alex from Florida. It made me feel so much better to know that we were all on the same flight together!
The flight was smooth and before we knew it we were arriving at our destination Hotel Valley Ho. I got checked in and had just enough time to get ready before meeting the rest of the teachers. The Welcome Dinner for the TOYs was a lot of fun. It was an amazing feeling to have a teacher of the year from every state and district/territory. In all there were 54 of us. I sat at a table with the teacher from Virgina, West Virginia, Hawaii, Alabama, Arkansas 2012, and two people from SMART Tech.
Pictures of Day 1 are below:
 |
| The really cool bathroom! |
 |
| The Hotel Room. |
 |
| Everyone at the dinner table the first night! |
 | |
| The group from the Atlanta airport! |
No comments:
Post a Comment