Kathy Nimmer, Indiana's Teacher of the Year, TSC teacher, and Final Four Finalist for National Teacher of the Year, visited us again on Wednesday. Knowing her love of literature, I'd asked her to come in and share with us some things about
A Christmas Carol.
To my delight, she shared that her favorite author was Charles Dickens, just like me. And then she guided us through threads and connections from the book to our lives, and how our past and present can and do influence our future. It was fascinating.
Ms. Nimmer also spoke briefly about being blind, citing a statistic that 75% of blind people are unemployed. When she learned of that statistic shortly after becoming blind herself, she determined that she would not let that happen to her. It played a major role in her decision to go to school and become a teacher.
She also shared a hilarious story about Nacho, her guide dog.
She was visiting an Amish school in northern Indiana and the children had built a giant snow dog in Nacho's honor, throwing buckets of water over it to make a hard, icy coating to preserve it.
Nacho spied the snow dog and headed off toward it, pulling Kathy along "as though I were on skis." He sniffed and circled it, and then Ms. Nimmer reported that the Amish children began laughing loudly.
Dreading what her dog most likely had just done to the snow sculpture that was created to honor him, she braced herself and prepared to apologize, only to hear large crunching sounds coming from Nacho.
He was not doing what she thought; he had bitten off the giant tail and was eating it! (Which was much better than what she'd feared!)
We are looking forward to having her returning next semester to teach us more about classic literature.
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