Bristol’s greatest teaching family

What makes a great teacher?

Imagine being in a room with over one hundred of the brightest young minds in Virginia, all who are about to graduate college and become school teachers.

That’s where I’ve been for the last two days, at the TOP (Teachers of Promise) Institute, in Richmond VA. These idealistic, passionate, and compassionate young people all assembled in one place this weekend. They each represented the top of their class, from various colleges and universities spanning the Commonwealth; among the very finest and very best future teachers one could ever find gathered together at one setting anywhere.

I was a special guest (as I have been for about a dozen years running now), invited to mentor these about-to-become-public-educators; to attempt to inspire them each to become - not just a teacher - but a great one.

TOP Institute is the wonderful brainstorm of my dear friend and fellow native Bristolian, Wade Whitehead. Wade has spent most of his career teaching elementary school in Roanoke.

Wade and I have both been blessed to have been recipients of the McGlothlin Award for Teaching Excellence. Likewise, we are both inductees into the National Teachers Hall of Fame (for which we were each personally congratulated by the President in the Oval Office at the White House). I’m proud to state that you can find no other place in all the world (other than Bristol) with two native citizens who have won both of these prestigious awards.

However, I am equally proud to say that Wade has gone on to do more than me. Much more.