{"id":9093,"date":"2015-04-27T13:57:05","date_gmt":"2015-04-27T13:57:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9093"},"modified":"2015-04-27T13:57:05","modified_gmt":"2015-04-27T13:57:05","slug":"teachers-an-underappreciated-profession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9093","title":{"rendered":"Teachers: an underappreciated profession"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>Public school teachers &#8212; especially the good ones &#8212; need our appreciation and an expression of thanks for all they do to help our children find their way into the world.<\/p>\n<p>One of them today received a high honor, indeed, from her peers. She happens to teach English right here in Amarillo. Many of her students are refugees, whose families have fled repression and deprivation.<\/p>\n<p>Take a bow, Shanna Peeples.<\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/US\/wireStory\/texas-english-teacher-named-national-teacher-year-30609349<\/p>\n<p>The Council of Chief State School Officers today named Peeples &#8212; who teaches at Palo Duro High School &#8212; its National Teacher of the Year. She was one of four finalists competing for the job. She&#8217;s the first Texan so honored since the late 1950s.<\/p>\n<p>Shanna is a former colleague of mine who&#8217;s gone on to enrich many lives along the way. It&#8217;s an amazing story, when you consider that becoming an educator was not her first choice of professions. She&#8217;s done a lot of things in her life &#8212; and working as a journalist was one of them.<\/p>\n<p>She gave up that career several years ago to pursue her real calling, which is to make a serious difference in young people&#8217;s lives.<\/p>\n<p>Shanna was asked this morning why she loves teaching and she replied because teaching gives her the chance to &#8220;write the last chapter&#8221; in young people&#8217;s stories.<\/p>\n<p>Public school teachers receive criticism all the time. Too little effort is made to offer high praise to the great work that many teachers do in our communities.<\/p>\n<p>One of them stands as a symbol of educational excellence. She has brought\u00a0great honor\u00a0to her state and to her profession.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re all proud of Shanna Peeples.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Public school teachers &#8212; especially the good ones &#8212; need our appreciation and an expression of thanks for all they do to help our children find their way into the world. One of them today received a high honor, indeed, from her peers. She happens to teach English right here in Amarillo. Many of her &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9093\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Teachers: an underappreciated profession<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[316,3216,3481,4243],"class_list":["post-9093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-amarillo-isd","tag-national-teacher-of-the-year","tag-palo-duro-high-school","tag-shanna-peeples"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9093\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}