Education

D.C. Teacher to Be Obama Guest at State of the Union

By Ross Brenneman — January 27, 2014 1 min read
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Tuesday is the big day.

President Barack Obama will deliver his fifth State of the Union speech Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET. It will most certainly be rousing to half the attendees, along with some of those Americans tuning in because the speech is bumping the Fox sitcom “New Girl.” (Unfortunate.)

As always, the White House has invited a select number of citizens to sit alongside first lady Michelle Obama, and among this year’s guests is Washington teacher Kathy Hollowell-Makle.

Hollowell-Makle, a former member of Teach For America, has taught for over 15 years in the District of Columbia school system, and in 2013 the district named her DCPS Teacher of the Year. She currently teaches at Simon Elementary School. Here she is in action:

Hollowell-Makle will join Michelle Obama’s other guests, student entrepreneur Joey Hudy, basketball player Jason Collins, Boston Marathon bombing survivors Carlos Arredondo and Jess Bauman, and Moore, Okla., fire chief Gary Bird.

Hollowell-Makle will likely see screentime during the education section of the president’s speech, which is expected to emphasize income inequality and poverty, as my colleague Alyson Klein reports at the Politics K-12 blog.

As Alyson notes in another post, however, the president’s big State of the Union initiatives don’t have a habit of going very far. But hey, fifth time’s the charm.

A version of this news article first appeared in the Teaching Now blog.