My nomination for the educator of the year award is Miss. Blum my 8th grade English teacher. I have chosen Miss. Blum because I believe that she has had the most influence on my reading out of all my English teachers in middle school. She was always recommending a new book or if there was a book I wanted to read she would get it. Miss. Blum had a whole library in the back of her room that was filled with book. All the books she had were books that students had recommended and she got. In her class I must have read over 50 books from her collection. She was also very funny and overall a good teacher.


When I was in middle school I went to 4 schools. I went to H.B.DuPont but during my 2 semester because of family problems we moved to Florida. In Florida I was dropped into a random school in the middle of the year, and if that wasn’t bad enough all the kids where straight from the island and all spoke some form of their native language. But of course I was hopeful and thought it would be all right but no, all the kids had already made the friends. But I got through that and moved to another school that was better because I had adapted so I was all good. But to my surprise my mom decided to move back to Delaware for my 8th grade year. I was tired of moving and my first day of school I only knew 1 person again but the people there were the nicest staff and students I’ve ever met. The teacher that stuck out the most was Miss. Blum. She showed us her vast collection of books and then told us about her chickens.


Miss Blum has 5 chickens she would always tell us about them. She lived in the rural part of Delaware near many Amish farms and had a chicken coup in her back yard so she decided to get chickens. She has eggs every morning and one of her chickens makes green eggs. She would also tell us how she saw a horse and buggy parked outside a Wal-Mart one night and she took a picture of it. When we weren’t hearing stories we were reading books and taking AR quizzes. Miss Blum also introduced my class to Achieve. Achieve was a web site were we read articles and then we would answer questions on it. This raised my lexlile level and bettered my comprehension skills. But my favorite part of English class was finding a book.




Miss.blum had a collection of over 100 books new and old. Any time a new book or series came out she would be the first to get it. If any student took interest in any other book and she saw them reading it then she would order the rest of the series. Miss. Blum always encouraged reading no matter what. She made people who never dreamed of reading fall in love with a book. I remember that in class we were reading Eli Wiesel “night” and she really got it. I only really remember it because she got so deep into the Holocaust she got a survivor to come and talk to the 8th grade class. She also got us a trip to the Holocaust museum in DC. At the museum I saw some really sad things but the saddest to me was hallway and on either side where shoes off victims of the concentration camp. All the shoes were burnt and varied in sizes. It means a lot that she took us there and showed all us that because before it was just kind of a thing (the Holocaust) but now even thought I know I will never fully understand now thanks to Miss. Blum I can understand more than I could ever hope to before.

All of these reasons and more are why I believe Miss. Blum should win Teen Ink Educator of the Year. I know my nomination is not the only one so I know she should win. I only wish I could write more to explain why she was so awesome but I can’t. I hope Miss. Blum never retires and if she does than she has a stack of letters and certificates to take with her.