Blue Springs educator named tops in Missouri

Linda Glasgow, a third-grade teacher at John Nowlin Elementary School in Blue Springs, has been named Missouri’s 2015-16 Teacher of the Year by the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

The news came Wednesday when school officials surprised her with the award at a school assembly.

Glasgow began teaching in 1984 and has been with the Blue Springs School District since 1987, according to a news release from the department. She has taught kindergarten through fourth grade and is also an adjunct instructor at Graceland University.

Glasgow said a teaching career came naturally.

“I played school and was always the teacher, volunteered to teach younger children at church, mothered my siblings and neighborhood children, and worked at a childcare center in high school,” she said in the release.

Blue Springs Superintendent Jim Finley praised Glasgow as a teacher with a “unique thirst for learning” and as someone who “inspires those around her through her example.”

Glasgow will represent Missouri in the National Teacher of the Year competition. She will be honored at an Oct. 26 banquet along with five other finalists, which includes Amy Krinke, a music teacher at Lee’s Summit West High School.