A Conversation with 2022 Teacher of the Year Kim Radostits

The National Teacher of the Year finalist and Oregon High School teacher known as Ms. Rad talks about why she advocates for having special education students in her Spanish class, how she overcame her fear of public speaking, the role llamas played in improving her teaching technique,  what she does in her spare time, and so much more.  

Our theme music is by José Rivera.

Transcript

Transcript for A Conversation with 2022 Teacher of the Year, Kim Radostits Podcast

RHODES  0:02  

Hello, we are the Illinois State Board of Education, and we love Illinois schools. I'm Dusty Rhodes in the Public Relations Department. Today we have a guest who has become very comfortable around microphones. All right, talk and let me see how big of a soundwave you make.

RADOSTITS  0:19  

My name is Kim Radostits I'm 2022 Illinois Teacher of the Year.

RHODES  0:23  

That's right, we have Ms. Rad. Not only is she our 2022 Illinois Teacher of the Year; she was also one of five finalists for National Teacher of the Year. She sat down to chat with us just before making her farewell speech to our State Board. 

I looked through your original application materials yesterday and one thing that jumped out at me is that you knew you wanted to be a teacher when you were in kindergarten. How did you know that?

RADOSTITS  0:57  

That's a great question. I think that it's because I have had teachers, both formal and informal, that have just always poured into me and I have always looked up to them. My kindergarten teacher in particular was one that really stood out even after a lifetime of doing education, and she was super passionate about her job. She treated every single student like they were the most important person in the room and every student felt that. We knew that we were loved from the second we walked in, and I think that that environment was such a safe welcoming space, that from the very first day of school, I knew it was a place that I wanted to spend my life. 

I liked school more than I liked summers, which not many kids can say. But I knew that that was something that I wanted for myself. And I've never looked back. And I'm really grateful to have had this opportunity to spend my life doing what I truly love.

RHODES  1:56  

So how did that play out in your childhood? Did you practice teaching when you were little?

RADOSTITS  2:04  

Absolutely. I say all the time that my brother was my first student. I would set up little school games in our family basement, where my brother would be the student and I would be the teacher and I would teach him all sorts of things. He was two years younger than me. I don't know that he loved it all the time that I was always the one that played teacher. But he definitely taught me a lot about classroom management, even as an elementary school student. 

Growing up in a K-12 district where I went to school in a K-12 building, I had a lot of adults that just continued to foster that dream that I had to be a teacher. So they gave me lots of opportunities in elementary school to be a helper. When middle school came around, I was offered the opportunity to be a mentor as an eighth grader to seventh graders. As a freshman, I mentored eighth graders that were at-risk of not graduating on time, which really kind of played itself into what I'm doing now. Then I was able to be a summer school assistant at Hiawatha, all sorts of opportunities that not only teachers gave me, but also the principal. 

And when you have somebody that you have a lot of respect for, reach out and kind of tap you on the shoulder and prove to you that they believe in you, it really does inspire you to just give it your best and just go for it. So when it came time to pick colleges, it was really the easiest decision ever, it was like, NIU was close to home, I knew they had a good teacher program, I knew I wanted to be a teacher. 

So the most challenging part for me, it was just figuring out what is it that I want to teach and that decision was made, again, based off of watching the teachers that had inspired me the most. Each and every one of them were people that were really passionate about their subject matter and because they were passionate, they drew students in. So I did a lot of soul-searching as to what is it in my life that I could get really fired up about. And to me that was talking about the culture of the Spanish-speaking world, because I had a mom and dad that invested in my brother and I by taking us to Mexico every single summer starting when I was seven years old. 

Those experiences were one in which not only was the culture beautiful, but it was a language that felt good on my tongue. The people there were really warm and inviting and I wanted to share that out with my own students. It's really been a beautiful content area to use as a vehicle to connect with my students. That really is my vision as a teacher is to use, to utilize my content matter is simply that it's an opportunity for me to connect with students in a variety of ways. And it's been a beautiful journey.

RHODES  4:50  

Wow. So that's like, truly grow your own. 

RADOSTITS  4:53  

Yeah. I didn't return to that school, but I mean, I'm within 30 miles of that school district. So I am the statistic that 60% of teachers stay within. What is it? 28 miles of their home?

RHODES  5:06  

Something like that, yeah, yeah. Okay. Who named you, Ms. Rad?

RADOSTITS  5:12  

That happened in student teaching. Radostits was a difficult name for the kids to say.

RHODES  5:18  

I'm sorry, it's a difficult name for adults to say.

RADOSTITS  5:20  

That's true. And so right off the bat, one of the students called me that on the first week of school and student teaching, and they were a little sheepish at first on whether or not I was going to like it. And I was okay with it. Then every year after that, it was like the, it's like the gift that students offer the incoming class that that is what we're going to call her. And so on the very first day of school, one of the things I talk about when I introduce myself is, you might see, you know, that you are in Spanish I with Ms. Radostits, but you may have heard that I’m Ms. Rad. And so yeah, it's just stuck for over 16 years now. In fact, my colleagues very rarely use my first name. It's just Rad. Yeah.

RHODES  6:06  

Okay. Tell me about the apron. 

RADOSTITS  6:10  

Yeah, the apron my signature look, it's quirky, it really is. But when I put on my teaching apron, I say all the time, that to me, it's like the equivalent of a superhero putting on his or her cape. A superhero that's connected to a fellowship of so many others, that have the power to change the world, one student at a time. I truly believe that. 

My apron has all, like, the tips and tricks that I've learned along the way. So in there, I have dozens and dozens of pencils, for the David's of the world that come to class without one every single day, right? But I always have his back, I know that he has mine. And I'm able to provide him with one without having to go back and forth, and back and forth to my desk, or to ask him to get up out of his chair and grab one. 

In the apron, I have little paper, scratch paper squares that really just came from the pile of paper, like the pile of shame that's next to the coffee machine, right? Where I cut them up and I keep them in my apron, so that if I see a student is struggling with a concept, I can kneel down next to them, pull out a square of paper, work through a problem with them. Whether it be mapping out a sentence in Spanish, or working on their algebra one homework during study hall. I always have that with me. 

I carry dozens and dozens of sticky notes so that I can connect with students in all sorts of ways. So I utilize them if I see a student walking into my room that looks like they're having a bad day, I might write on there, are you okay? Yes or no, circle one. And at some point during the lesson, I'll put that on their desk. And they can flash it to me at one point, during a transition period, or something of that sort. I utilize them as like sticky notes of praise, sticky notes of encouragement. 

I carry a button that corresponds to a wireless doorbell in my room. I learned very early on in my career that the best way to get students to follow rules is to keep your rules really, really short. And so I have one rule and one rule only in my room. And that is that when I ring the bell, they need to stop whatever it is that they're doing, and they need to listen for directions. So I utilize that one rule as a way of redirecting students for all sorts of reasons. What I love most about the buttons of the doorbell is that my freshman, 14 year olds in all of their innocence take months to figure out where the sound is coming from. They don't know how I make the bell work, they think I might have like, scheduled it ahead of time. I don't know how they think it works at first, but I keep that in there. 

And then I'm really just, you know, I have a copy of the schedule for the day. And it allows me to be super-efficient as a teacher, it allows me to float around my room at all points during the class period. I don't feel like I have to be tethered to a desk or to a podium. I think that allows me to really build some strong connections with students. If I see that a kid seems to be struggling, I'm able to walk over to their part of the classroom and teach from there. If I see that a student you know is having some kind of situation with another student in the room, I'm able to be in between those two students so that it doesn't escalate. It just gives me freedom. And it gives students the physical proximity to feel like we're in it together at all times, which is kind of been a beautiful liberating thing. I wish I would have started it sooner. I've only worn it for about 10 years now.

RHODES  9:41  

So I was gonna ask you when you started it and what made you start it? You know, what did you use before, just pockets?

RADOSTITS  9:49  

Well, yeah, I mean, I guess … I mean, no, before that, I really would just walk back and forth to my desk all the time. And so the apron started with somebody that gave me the apron. I didn't know what to do with it. At first, it was just because it had llamas on it. And so and I…

RHODES  10:04  

Wait, wait, what is it about llamas?

RADOSTITS  10:07  

I went to Peru in 2010 and when I was there, I took lots of photos of llamas, and I brought home a couple of stuffed llamas and some different souvenirs with llamas on it. And my students saw that, and they just thought that man Ms. Rad must really like llamas. Now I have this collection where anytime a student sees one, they bring it to me. And that's what happened with the apron. They brought me this apron. They had llamas on it, and it looks like a waitress apron. At first, I didn't know what to do with it. I put it on one day, and I realized how versatile it was. As somebody that loves wearing dresses, it's wonderful. I no longer have to worry about dresses with pockets on me at all times, which is wonderful.

RHODES  10:48  

And how many aprons do you have now?

RADOSTITS  10:50  

I have the original one, two more that I've purchased off of Etsy. And since then, I've had three students who have taken on apron making as a craft project to just be kind to me, and so I have probably a dozen of them now. Several of them are unique to me and my passion. So like one of them, when I won Illinois Teacher of the Year, is an Illinois print where one part of it has the word Illinois over and over again and another part of it has apples. It's become, you know, the thing that students know that when I have it on I mean business. I'm ready. I'm ready to go.

RHODES  11:31  

So you don't wear it to the games that you go to or the bowling night.

RADOSTITS  11:36  

No, I mean, I guess if I'm chaperoning an event that requires pockets. Yeah, sometimes I've worn it to dances and things of that sort, if I'm honest as a student council member, but no, not normally, not to games.

RHODES  11:49  

Has anybody else picked up on this and started wearing an apron?

RADOSTITS  11:52  

In my time as Illinois Teacher of the Year I share, I wear the apron in all of my speeches. I have had several aspiring teachers come up to me and ask me where I've gotten them from. And they have said that they plan on carrying on the tradition in their classrooms. But in my own building no one yet.

RHODES  12:11  

I'm surprised to hear that. Okay. All right. Is it fair to say that Hawks Take Flight is your signature project? Okay. Go ahead and tell me the top line statistics.

RADOSTITS  12:26  

So in 2007/2008, our school district had identified that a class of 130 Freshmen had accumulated over 237 freshman semester F's, which is scary because the statistic out of Chicago is that if a freshman ends their year with a D average, they have less than a 28% chance of graduating on time. 

So that year, the principal that we had, called myself and four other first- through third-year teachers and a counselor, and asked us if we would be willing to visit some other school districts to see the work that they were doing on freshmen on-track. The school districts that he paired us up with were school districts that were much larger than ours. As a result, they were able to do some really fancy programming that we just didn't have the manpower to do. 

So what we landed on was an after-school homework hub, where our vision was that we were going to pull in the 10 students from that year that had struggled the most, and we were gonna help them with their homework. What we soon learned was those 10 students didn't really need help with their homework, but what they needed was an adult that was going to help them set goals and was going to help them really kind of chip away at some of those circumstances that they had out of school, outside of school that were interfering with their success. Things like divorce and homelessness and the loss of a parent and low self-esteem and anxiety. 

That following year then we decided to revamp our homework hub and create more of a mentorship program where we invited two more teachers on board, and the seven of us, each committed to mentoring two incoming freshmen. We did that for several years when we asked the eighth grade team in our school district to nominate students ahead, circumstances outside of school that were interfering with their success, so that we could onboard them over the summer and show them that they had an adult that cared for them day one. And we saw a lot of success within the first few years of that and have since really developed it into a multi-tiered system of support in that not only are we asking the eighth grade team to identify students that they see anecdotally struggling in their classes, but we've developed an early warning system that allows us to pull in data points of all sorts, both data points that show disengagement, but also some engagement indicators. Pull it all together, and we're able to filter the eighth grade class from the most at-risk to the least at-risk. And then we're able to pull the 15% of the student body that's the most disengaged and pull them into our programs. 

So it's a very data-based intervention now where no student is, you know, in danger of kind of slipping between the cracks. And we again mentor them once a week. And we've taken the 237 Fs in 2007-2008, to only 14 the year before the pandemic. We were able to do that by just sitting with these students one-on-one and creating realistic goals that were personalized to the student in the moment. Sometimes those goals are academic, it might be your goal for this week is to get to a passing grade in algebra one. Or it could be your goal for this week is to study for your Romeo and Juliet test to make sure that you get at least a C on it. Or it could be something a little bit more social, emotional aware, it could be, hey, I visited the cafeteria several times this week, and I've seen that you're hanging out with this group of students that seemed to be dragging you down. I would like to see you make a shift and sit somewhere else. And I'm gonna be keeping an eye on you to see how you're doing on this goal. 

And really holding those students accountable to those goals has made a huge difference over the years. It really made them feel supported, so that at the end of the year, they really do take flight. 

The question that I get asked all the time is, you pour all of this time into these freshmen, what are you doing for them as sophomores, juniors, and seniors? What we're seeing is that there isn't a need for a program sophomore, junior and senior year because those students and their mentors develop such a strong relationship freshman year. And we hone those skills of self-advocacy that when those students are sophomores, juniors, and seniors, if they find themselves in a situation in which they need support, they know how to get out there and find it, whether it be through their mentor or through another teacher that they've built a strong relationship with. 

So I think what I find most incredible about the Hawks Take Flight program happened during the pandemic. I mean, during the pandemic, you saw hundreds of thousands of students across the nation go rogue on their teachers when we went remote, right? We saw students just become extremely disconnected when it came to school. That small population of Hawks Take Flight kids did the opposite. When we went remote, they were the ones that were reaching out to us for support, as opposed to just blending into the woodwork and or like riding off into the sunset, I guess. They came to us for support because they wanted to stay on track. And they wanted to stay successful because they knew much how much time they had poured into getting to where they were, which for a lot of them was a very, very steep climb.

RHODES  17:36  

I noticed that you said, implementing this technology allows us to look at data first to make a list of students at-risk. And then to see anecdotes from the eighth grade team to explain the numbers that we are seeing. And it seemed like there was a shift that happened in the type of evaluation you did. So it sounds like there's some nuance in there that other people might not have thought of. Could you talk about what those things were? 

RADOSTITS  18:02

Absolutely, I think that you know, as teachers, we're really, but we're all very well intentioned, we all build really strong relationships with our students. But sometimes, if we aren't, you know, looking at data closely, we might not realize that Jimmy, he's passing all of his classes right now, but you might not realize that he's had 70 missing assignments. And the reason why he's doing well in his classes, is because he does really, really well on his tests. Well, that's great in eighth grade and that strategy, you know that that default success strategy has worked for him as an eighth grader. But when you get to high school, if you're not doing that practice work, the chances of you getting a good grade on that assessment at the end of the unit are, it's probably not very likely, right? And so that habit is something that we need to work on in Hawks Take Flight. 

And I think that what we learned early on, by only taking in anecdotes, was that to be truthful, a lot of the students that were nominated for the program were students that were exhibiting outward, disruptive behaviors. And those were the students that we kept pulling in. And there were a group of students that were a little bit quieter, that sat at the back of the room didn't really make much of a fuss that kind of were flying under the radar. And so that data piece allowed us to make sure that no student was left unseen. 

And I think that that's one of the beautiful things that we need to look towards for the future of education is that we need to be very, very mindful about not being binary and in the different ways we approach education. I don't think, I mean, data is important, yeah. Social emotional learning is important, yes, but we shouldn't be looking at one and not the other. It should be a both and. I think that that's how we've been able to elevate this program is by both using the expertise from teachers and using data and pairing those two things together to get a really well-rounded view of what's happening with a student. 

Because there's a very, very different situation going on, again, with a student like Jimmy who's passing all of his classes with 70 missing assignments. And a student like Robert, who has, you know, 12 missing assignments, but is failing five classes, like, those are two students that are struggling in different kinds of ways. And they both need support, but we need to kind of come together and utilize that data and those anecdotes to build a plan for them, and to be ready for them, to onboard them before they even stepped foot in the school. And I think that that last piece is why Hawks Take Flight is so successful is that we do some of that planning over the summer before we even start working with the students. So they don't even have a chance to dig themselves a hole, they come in, and we're ready for them.

RHODES  20:54

I feel like you're talking about my two sons, Robert and Jimmy. I mean, that's not their names, but you just described them. So it sounds like Hawks Take Flight began as sort of tutoring and morphed into mentoring, and then maybe morphed into case management.

RADOSTITS  21:12  

Yeah, I mean, I guess that is what happened. And that's how we've been as successful as we have is that the next part after mentoring, then was starting the family engagement piece, right? And so all the Hawks Take Flight mentors have really strong relationships with the families of the students that are in our program. That partnership with families, I do believe is what got our numbers down to 14, the year before the pandemic. It was because those students in that program not only had support in the teachers that they had classes with, but then with that after school cohort of teachers, and then with the counselors that were also enrolled in that program with the freshman team, that was another layer. And then their parents also knew what was going on in school. 

So from the time they woke up in the morning until the time they went to bed, they had adults that had eyes on them at all points in time, so that they not only had a cheerleader that was willing to celebrate successes with them, but they also had a confidant and somebody to lean on when things were difficult and tricky. As mentors, and I guess, essentially, like we are sort of case managers, we make sure to inform parents slash families about both of those things, we're not only calling about the concerns that we have, we're also calling about the celebrations because we want parents to continue that celebration at home. 

I think one thing that I've recognized even more recently about this group of students is that many of them, the reason why they struggle in school is because they lack confidence when it comes to school, because a lot of these students have experienced multiple failures in the past, and they've just convinced themselves that they just they can't do it. And so chipping away at their confidence in short, little bursts by celebrating what might be, from an outside perspective, seemingly small, little successes really do build up to something that's really empower students so that they are motivated to move towards bigger goals in the future. 

And that's what my work has looked like on sabbatical this year is that I've been really digging more into motivational theory, that's something that I've been working on in the last couple of years. But this year in particular, that's the message that I've been sharing out to aspiring teachers and veteran teachers, is how do you utilize motivational theory to not only work with this group of students that I might see in a Hawks Take Flight population, but to engage all students and all learners in your classroom to make sure that they're reaching the goals that you want them to, to reach in your individual content areas.

RHODES  23:46  

One thing I noticed is that you advocated for special education students to take Spanish. I can't tell you how much I love that. As the mom of son, who was told – and he wasn’t special ed -- but he was told, you didn't take a certain level of language arts in eighth grade, therefore you can't take Spanish. So why would you not let him try? Yeah, you know, if he tries and fails, he can drop out right? He can change. But, but if you don't even let him try… and he did great.

RADOSTITS  24:18  

Yes, as I said before, when you study motivational theory, one model that I love to lean into is the ARCS model of motivation from John Keller in the ‘80s. And that model of motivation states that in order for somebody to be motivated towards a task, it needs to include one of four things. It needs to be something that catches their attention. It needs to be something that's relevant to them in their everyday lives. It needs to be something that they're confident in, and it needs to be something satisfies them in terms of praise or achievement. 

I feel like Spanish is the perfect content to be a vehicle for that. And building students’ confidence when it comes to school because you, in our school district, the first experience that students get to Spanish is Spanish I. So that means every single student that walks into my room starts as an equal, every single student that walks into my room starts off with knowing nothing more than Hola, ¿cómo estás? 

And so it is a content area that really lends well to building the confidence of students because their progress in my class is extremely observable. And I've seen with that group of special education students in particular, who might not have felt success in school in the past, that when they are able to write a sentence to several sentences to a paragraph to the end of year, full page letter that they write my mom as their last assignment, you can see them just being with pride and actually very visibly see the progress that they've made. And that's something that I think every single student deserves to feel at some point in their career. So that was why I advocated for.

RHODES  26:04  

Okay, thank you. The New Teacher Academy is another one of your pet projects. And the benefit to the new teachers is obvious. It's designed for them. But I picked up on I think that the veteran teachers also learned something from the new teachers. Can you give me an example?

RADOSTITS  26:27  

Absolutely. I think that the, I mean, the new teachers, especially the new teachers that we have coming into our schools now post-pandemic, they have a lens on the world that's completely different than the one that we had from when we first went into the profession. And so us veteran teachers were always super-inspired with some of the tools and tricks that they have in terms of technology, for starters. 

But then also, they had been given the gift to go into classrooms within the last few years and see the things that teachers are doing in in other school districts, and they're able to bring that to ours to give us a new perspective and to give us new ideas on ways that we can engage students in our own building. And so we find that not only are those new teachers bringing new ideas, but the conversations that the veteran teachers and the new teachers are having with each other, are fruitful on both ends, because as a veteran teacher it helps you well, one, reconnect with your purpose and your why, as to why you got into education to begin with. But then it also reaffirms some of the things that you're doing in your room and why you're doing the things that you're doing in your room. And sometimes to be truthful, it might be sort of as a good lens as to man, I've been doing this thing for the last 10 years. And why am I doing it, maybe it's something that I need to either revamp or ditch and try something new. And so working with that group of individuals has been incredibly inspiring to me. And I do believe that's one of the reasons why I ended up in this role as Illinois Teacher of the Year this year is that that group of individuals inspire me to stay unfinished. I've recognized through working with them that there's always other ways for me to grow as an educator, and I'm inspired to help everybody around me grow in some capacity, whether it be my students, my colleagues, my admin, we all can benefit from that. And that's the only way that we're going to be able to elevate education is if we continue to evolve to meet the needs of all of our learners.

RHODES  28:25  

And you don't get a stipend for either one of these programs. 

RADOSTITS

No. 

RHODES

Pretty time consuming. What do you do in your spare time? (laughs)

RADOSTITS  28:33  

Yeah, in my spare time, I love hiking. I recognized like three or four years ago that I've always complained about winter, but I love the Midwest. And so if I am going to continue to live in the Midwest so that I can stay connected to the people that I have here, I had to figure out a way to like winter, or otherwise I would be hating like a quarter of my life. So, I took up snowshoeing, and that's something that I absolutely love. I just love spending time out in the woods. My family has a cabin in the North Woods of Wisconsin, I spend a lot of time there. Anytime I can get away on a Friday afternoon and spend Saturday and Sunday up there. That's something that I'm going to do. And it just gives me an opportunity to just dream about what the future could hold for me and for my students, which is a great way to recharge.

RHODES  29:23  

Gosh, I thought I was asking a rhetorical question. I didn't think you had any free time. I'm glad that you do. You also said that you had a huge fear of public speaking and you’ve been public speaking probably nonstop and in your sleep.

RADOSTITS  29:40  

Today is speaking engagement number 93. So a lot has changed in the last 11 months of my life. And to be truthful, the way I've overcome that this year is that my Superintendent, at the end of last school year, gave the end-of-year address to the entire district, and he said that there are only two core emotions: love, and fear. In that moment, I'm not sure that I completely believed him. But over the summer, I did a lot of reflecting on that idea and that concept, but there are only two, core emotions, love and fear. 

And I started to think about how I, as an educator, love what I do. I love the profession. I love the students that I serve. And so I really leaned into this idea of how can I take that passion that I exude every single day and use it as a way to overcome my fear. So, when I get up in front of a crowd, I like, I guess I've reframed it as a service to the profession and this service to my students, and I'm getting emotional talking about this, Dusty, so I don't know about this question. Oh, yeah, I've been able to, I've really been able to lean into that. 

And now, it's just become natural anytime I have the opportunity to talk about the profession, to me, that's a gift and an opportunity that I'm going to seize, you know, seize that moment. So a lot of growth has happened this year. And that's, that's one of the big ones for sure.

RHODES  29:52

Well, this is by definition, a very public public honor that involved a lot of public speaking. But tell me a little bit about that introspective experience of having to leave your classroom and take a sabbatical.

RADOSTITS  31:35

Yeah. Yeah, it's been an emotional roller coaster, to say the least. I think that when you’re first named Illinois Teacher of the Year, you experience literally every emotion possible, even more so than the two that my superintendent said. The first piece of that was that idea of, how do I leave my room? And how do I leave this community, especially, having taught for 16 years? August was hard in that for 16 years, I had the same routine: the bell told me what to do every day. I knew I had my schedule that I followed; I had the individuals in my building that I would lean on time and time again. I had the students that I had built strong relationships with, the parents that I would talk to you time and time again. Not wearing the apron, the first month, surprisingly, was very, very strange. I felt very unequipped to do the job as Illinois Teacher of the Year, at first.

RHODES  32:36  

And you didn't have a doorbell in your pocket. 

RADOSTITS  32:38  

And I didn't have a doorbell in my pocket! But you know, it didn't take much longer than two or three weeks for me to realize that I had been given a real gift. Because by middle of August, I had started to make connections with educators from across the state of Illinois, through the Teach Plus fellowship that I was a part of, but also through ILSTOY, so teachers like Lindsey Jenson, and Steve Alza, and Justin Johnson, who are some of the greats and they were inspiring me in all sorts of ways. I got the opportunity to go into other school districts and talk about Hawks Take Flight, to talk about freshman sym, to ask them what kinds of systems they had in place to make sure that their students were successful. And those conversations were what I lived for this year.

It was an incredible opportunity to see what's happening out there. And for me, again, to dream about ways that I can be better when I returned to the classroom, this coming school year, but also inspired me to give more of myself outside of the four walls of my classroom. 

And I think what I soon realized was, I was giving up the students in my room for a year. But in so many ways, my classroom just got bigger. I think about that. Not only did my classroom get bigger, across the state of Illinois, but as a National Teacher of the Year finalist, my world got bigger nationally, too, and that I was able to share the awesome things that we're doing in small town, Illinois on a more national scale. And how amazing is that?

RHODES  34:11  

Yeah, that was pretty cool. How many times did you have to explain Oregon, Illinois?

RADOSTITS  34:18  

So many times, and yet here in Illinois, when you talk about Oregon, Illinois, a lot of people know about it because of either the Black Hawk statue or White Pines, the White Pines Ranch, I guess a lot of people have come out to our town for that as students. People in Illinois at least are familiar about it. Nationally, not so much. I have to talk about how I'm from Illinois, but not Chicago. There's more to Illinois than just Chicago.

RHODES  34:48  

Okay, I guess this will be my last question. Do you have advice for Brianna Morales, the new Teacher of the Year?

RADOSTITS  34:56  

Her and I are already in contact with each other, And I hope that that is a connection that we can continue to foster for the rest of this year. 

But my big advice to her if she's listening to this right now is to just seize every opportunity and to treat this as a year of yes. And to even jump into things that might make you uncomfortable, because that's truly where the growth comes from. 

I have traveled all over the state of Illinois this year, right? From our cities to our suburbs to our corn country. That's something that I plan on digging more into. I've seen a lot of corn this year and as I've watched the corn, I've been reflecting a lot on how, when planted, even corn seeds have to break down in order to transform. And there are going to be moments this year, where you might not feel like you have the toolkit that you need to really tackle some of these, these events that you're going to be asked to, to take part in. 

However, there's always going to be individuals, either with ILSTOY or ISBE, or around the state, that are willing to uplift you and to coach you and to support you through those moments. I have no doubt that if you continue to say yes and continue to go through the year with a mindset of one where you're going to grow and stay unfinished, that you're going to finish the year like I have and really feeling like you've been given a gift. 

That would be my big advice, would be to just say yes to anything that anybody asks you and grow.

RHODES  36:39  

Well, I appreciate you saying yes to our little podcast, and giving us the gift of your time. So I know you have to go to the board meeting now.

RADOSTITS  36:48  

Yes. So I feel like it's gonna be a full circle moment, which I'm excited about.

RHODES  36:53  

Yeah. All right. Well, thank you, Ms. Rad.

RADOSTITS  36:57  

Thank you for having me here.

RHODES  37:04  

You've been listening to Kimberly Radostits, better known as Ms. Rad, our 2022 Illinois Teacher of the Year. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe on Apple or Spotify and share it with your friends. Thanks for listening

Transcribed by https://otter.ai