Tuesday, June 2, 2015 2:21 pm

NASHVILLE _ Mary Beth Young, kindergarten teacher at Woodland Elementary School, has been selected by the State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE) 2015-16 class of the Tennessee Educator Fellowship.

Young is one of 26 eachers selected for the fellowship which will be led by Peter Tang, a master teacher at Kate Bond Middle School in Memphis and a member of the first Tennessee Educator Fellowship cohort, has been named Educator Fellows Coordinator.

"Teachers are the most important in-school factor for increasing student success, and their insight is crucial to developing the policies and practices that can sustain and accelerate student growth in Tennessee," SCORE President and CEO Jamie Woodson said. "The Tennessee Educator Fellowship equips and empowers classroom teachers to advocate for their students and their profession. In just one year, the fellowship has helped teachers discover new and powerful ways to participate in and inform the discussion about how best to prepare all students in Tennessee for success after high school."

"The Tennessee Educator Fellowship was a powerful and enriching experience for the 22 teachers who made up the inaugural class," Tang said. The 2014-15 Educator Fellows have appeared at dozens of public speaking engagements, invited policymakers into their classrooms, written about their education experience in state and national publications, and served on state-level policy committees.

"Tennessee teachers have been instrumental in helping our state become the fastest-improving for student achievement, and in the Tennessee Educator Fellowship a diverse group of experienced teachers come together to learn, reflect, and grow into confident teacher leaders," Tang said.

The new class of the Tennessee Educator Fellowship includes teachers with more than 300 years of combined teaching experience. These Educator Fellows represent elementary, middle, and high schools in urban, suburban, and rural systems across East, Middle, and West Tennessee. The members of the cohort teach math, English, science, social studies, history, government, engineering and robotics, music, and junior ROTC.

The 2015-16 Educator Fellows will hold their first gathering in July. Throughout the upcoming year, the Educators Fellows will learn through in-person and online seminars and will serve as liaisons between their colleagues, their communities, and policymakers as Tennessee continues the work of improving educational outcomes for all students.

Tang has been teaching for five years in the Memphis area and is an alumnus of the Teach Plus Teaching Policy Fellows program, where he had the opportunity to brief national and state policymakers about teacher development and rigorous academic standards. He serves as a Tennessee Department of Education Core Coach and on the board of EdReports.org, a nonprofit that provides Consumer Reports-style reviews of instructional materials. Tang succeeds Cicely Woodard, who has been on leave from Metro Nashville Public Schools and is returning to the classroom as a math teacher at West End Middle Prep.

The State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE) collaboratively supports Tennessee's work to prepare students for college and the workforce. We are an independent, nonprofit, and nonpartisan advocacy and research institution, founded by Senator Bill Frist, M.D., former U.S. Senate Majority Leader. For more information about SCORE, visit tnscore.org.