Alabama Teacher of the Year Resigns– The Backstory, Part II
Ann Marie Corgill
On November 23, 2015, I began a series of posts about Ann Marie Corgill, the 2014-15 Alabama Teacher of the Year who resigned from Birmingham City Public Schools effective October 30, 2015. Corgill’s resignation was prompted by notification from the state department of education that the state did not consider her certified to teach fifth grade.
Of course, there is more to the story than a single event leading to a career teacher’s resignation. In this post, I offer more details from Corgill’s story based upon our four-hour interview on November 20, 2015.
Let us go back to the beginning of the 2015-16 school year and Corgill’s decision to leave the affluent Mountain Brook school system for an opportunity to teach at the decidedly non-affluent Birmingham City schools.
(Note: Most of this post is comprised of Corgill’s words, which are indented. My questions and comments are in quotation marks and are not indented.) Corgill begins:
I had been talking all year (2014-15) about this tug in my heart to not stay in Mountain Brook because, not because it wasn’t a good place, not because I hadn’t learned a lot, but because it was very comfortable….My reason [for leaving the comfort of Mountain Brook] was, I want to continueAlabama Teacher of the Year Resigns– The Backstory, Part II | deutsch29: