Nebraska Teacher of the Year talks California trip, future activities
Aurora math teacher Scott Phillips’s year as Nebraska’s Teacher of the Year is leading to many firsts in his life and — as seems to be typical of the outgoing educator — he is making the most of all of it.
Fresh back from the first of several cross-country trips he will be taking this year, Phillips talked about his first experience as a keynote speaker at a statewide event and his plans for a community event in Aurora that will be his special project for the year.
When Phillips traveled to the San Francisco area at the end of February to meet with other teachers of the year from around the country, it was the first time he had ever been to the Golden State and the first time he had ever flown by himself without family or friends by his side. As a self-described typical “Midwest kid,” Phillips said he has flown to Florida with a group before, but up until then his travels had only been on family car trips east to Kansas City, west to Colorado and south to Texas to visit family.
Phillips said the trip to California’s Silicon Valley was kind of surreal because outside his hotel window he could see the stadium where the San Francisco 49ers play football. The purpose of the gathering was to serve as an orientation to the National Teacher of the Year Program sponsored by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and to give the teachers from around the nation their first opportunity to get to know one another and begin their year of networking.
The first day was spent in introductions and orientation, according to Phillips and, always eager to make new friends, the 7th grade math teacher says he was fascinated to get to know teachers from as far away as Alaska and the Pacific Island of Samoa. The latter he got to know the second day of the trip on the bus ride to visit the Google headquarters.
“Just talking to her was really interesting because, of course, they’re a lot different than Nebraska,” he said. “I’m asking all these questions, and she was saying that the airport on her island only flies planes on Thursdays. So we got done with the conference on a Thursday and by the time she’s able to get back to Hawaii... she had to stay at Hawaii for a week before she was able to go home. Honestly, a majority of the time I was there in California, I was just learning so much about different people.”
Another teacher Phillips spoke with was the teacher of the year from Alaska.
“I sat down at lunch with her when we were at Google and just asked her questions,” he said. “Her class does like marine biology study in their science class because they live right next to the ocean and they’re studying beluga whales. They’re building underwater drones and all this different stuff to clean up the ocean. It’s really, really cool stuff. She was also telling me that there’s a stretch of the school year where it’s only light outside for 45 minutes and she said that the light is like the dusk, you know, like when the sun barely comes up, and then it goes down.”
Phillips struck up a friendship with a man from Alabama who also teaches middle school and with whom he shares similar life experiences.
A visit to Google HQ
One of the most interesting and admittedly exhausting parts of the trip for Phillips happened on Day 2 when the group traveled to the nearby headquarters of Google, which is on a sprawling college-like campus in Mountain View, Calif. Leaving at 8 in the morning, Phillips said the group didn’t return until 8 that night.
“That was super interesting because we learned about AI technology and education and that’s kind of like a little bit of a scary thing, because it’s brand new technology that is being invented and you just kind of wonder how it’s going to change things,” he said. “I feel like it’s already changing things... the guy from Google told us was that with education they want AI technology to help teachers save time. And that to me, that makes sense. Like whether it’s creating an outline for your lesson plan or putting together a presentation outline or a unit outline, whatever it may be, it’s just there to help you save time so that you can then invest in the important part of education, which is the relationships again. They’re really focused on that.”
Building relationships
As the reader has no doubt surmised by now, for Phillips the most important part of the event was relationship-building, networking and having the opportunity to pick the brains of others who have had similar experiences.
“One teacher was a coach also,” Phillips said, “and to me, my biggest thing to juggle is the teaching, coaching and being a dad as well as doing the Teacher of the Year stuff. So I asked his advice on how to balance all those things because he’s been through it already because he was the National Teacher of the Year a few years ago. Just being able to seek wisdom from people who have already been through it was a really important part of it.”
He said the trip also gave him an opportunity to reflect on how he will use the year ahead of him.
“I had a some time to sit down and figure out what’s my main message as the teacher of the year,” Phillips said, “and what am I going to try to portray to these people I’m going to talk to throughout the year, knowing that I was going to come back to Nebraska and speak at totally different Nebraska locations. So taking what I can learn from other people was important, but then also staying true to myself and being able to apply what I want to do in the classroom, I think, is also equally important when it came back to Nebraska.”