“Who was that teacher for you?”

That was the question Sarah Brown Wessling asked the crowd in the Kiva Tuesday afternoon.

With an energetic smile, Wessling, the 2010 National Teacher of the Year, told the audience to keep that teacher, the one who saw something in you that you couldn’t see yourself, in mind throughout her lecture.

She was “that” teacher for her own students at Johnston High School in Iowa, where she teaches 10th through 12th grade English. She said if it weren’t for her students, she might not have won the prestigious award.

The students nominated Wessling for the Teacher of the Year in Iowa, and Wessling then went on to win the national award.

Wessling said many people ask her to reveal her secret, but she said she doesn’t have one.

“I’m a deliberate teacher,” she said. “I practice my craft; I’m not afraid of my mistakes.”

Wessling uses tools like Facebook, music and other unconventional approaches that fit her students’ needs.

Parents of her students sometimes criticize her for her methods, but she tries to explain the reason for her non-traditional teaching.

She said parents haven’t been her only roadblock.

During Wessling’s second year of teaching, she said she had a very difficult time with her students, and she even told her husband during winter break that she didn’t want to go back.

But Wessling finished the year, and at the end she told her students to fill out an evaluation of her teaching.

She read the evaluations alone in her classroom.

“They weren’t mean,” Wessling said. “They were really honest.”

Wessling began to cry, and for fear of anyone seeing her breakdown, she crawled under her own desk.

She grabbed for the phone on her desk and called the best teacher she knew — her mom, who had been a fourth grade teacher for 24 years.

“Well, honey,” Wessling’s mom said, “You gonna get out from behind the desk?”

Wessling said that when she said yes to her mom that day under her desk with tears in her eyes, she said yes to being a teacher.

“That’s what teachers do every day,” Wessling said, “They get out from behind the desk.”

“It was reassuring to see that she struggled too”, said Dave Chupak, senior integrated language arts major.

“She wasn’t going to continue, she had a pivotal moment and then pressed on to be National Teacher of the Year,” Chupak said. “It’s good to see everyone struggles. Even the best of us.”

After Wessling decided to commit, she began to discover the best ways to help students learn.

She said she found that there is a gap between what many teachers imagine their classrooms will be like, and what the students need the classrooms to be.

“Teachers live in that gap,” Wessling said. “Teaching happens when we welcome the reality that walks through our door. We embrace it and learn how to move it.”

Contact Kelsey Misbrener at [email protected].