The Salem Community High School Teacher of Year is Carrie Toth.
The surprise announcement came at the close of school breakfast at SCHS on Thursday morning by Superintendent Dr. Brad Detering.
“From just the person that is sought after by people in their field as an expert. Someone who has even helped to expand dual credit and have gotten a number of books published and continues to set record numbers of students receiving the Seal of Bi-Literacy. The 2024 Teacher of the Year is Carrie Toth.”
The award is made annually by the Salem Community High School Academic Foundation with recommendation by the teacher’s association and administration.
Toth is in her 30th year of teaching and came to SCHS in the 2016-17 school year. Toth had wanted to teach in her hometown and at the school where she first became passionate about Spanish. She began working with students to get the state seal of bi-literacy during her initial year at SCHS. Toth is also proud of her work with Kaskaskia College on dual credits.
“Our students who are on the Seal of Bi-Literacy are receiving 4 extra semester hours of credit this year because they got the state seal of bi-literacy and next year we are expanded dual credit program again so all our juniors will get credit for Spanish 101 and 102 and seniors for Spanish 203 and 204. Very grateful to KC for that collaboration for trusting the high school dual credit teachers to bring those students up to the level to be able to get 16 dual credit hours.”
Toth also thanked the SCHS administration for making her work all possible.
“Just want to say thank you to our administrators. They trust me to teach the way I’m comfortable teaching. They trust me to give the dual credit and seals of bi-literacy and let me go to conferences to expand my knowledge base. They are so supportive and I couldn’t of done all this without their support.”
As part of the award, Toth will receive $500 from the Academic Foundation for her classroom and $250 in cash for herself from the teacher’s association.
Toth is past Illinois and Midwest Spanish Teacher of the Year and was one of five for the National Spanish Teacher of the Year while earlier teaching at Carlyle.
