Penn’s Anne Tschetter is named Teacher of the Year

As her students waited excitedly in her classroom, Mrs. Tschetter was called out of her room with a distraction. Meanwhile, the local media filed into the Penn orchestra room and prepared to capture her reaction as the announcement was made. She didn’t know it yet, but Mrs. Anne Tschetter had been named PHM’s Teacher of the Year.

Mrs. Tschetter was nominated for the prestigious award by Mr. Northern, the director of the Fine Arts Academy. The local media and your very own PNN news team were informed and invited to cover the story. Mrs. Tschetter’s husband was also there to support her as she was informed of her new title.

So as Mrs. Tschetter made her way back into her classroom, accompanied by Dr. Jerry Thacker, an entire fleet of supporters was there to celebrate her.

Mrs. Tschetter has taught in the Penn-Harris-Madison school district for twenty-one years. Twenty of those years were spent at Discovery Middle School as the orchestra director, and six of those years were spent teaching part time at the high school. This is Mrs. Tschetter’s first year teaching only at Penn High School.

She is a violinist and violist who preforms with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra. The time Mrs. Tschetter has spent as a professional player allows her to teach students with the lessons and determination that she’s learned while participating in the South Bend Symphony. Tschetter said, “I am like my students, I have to sit in rehearsal everyday, so I do what they do and I know what it’s like to have to learn the music, how hard it is to learn, to work with a conductor. It keeps me grounded.”

At the celebration, Mrs. Tschetter was taken aback by all of the show of support that surrounded her while she was being acknowledged for the prestigious award. With her black day second block class in the room cheering their teacher and director on, it made it even more of a treat for Tschetter to feel the enthusiasm on her special day.

PNN spoke to PHM Superintendent of Penn-Harris-Madison, Dr. Jerry Thacker, who talked about Mrs. Tschetter’s excellence in the PHM community, “When we think about excellence, we talk a lot about our ‘Triangle of Success’, the students, teacher, and parents, and we know if we want to have greatness and great performance we have to have that connection, especially in music. She’s [Mrs. Tschetter] an exemplary role model of great work ethic, highly motivated, she loves the students, and she just has a continuous passion for music education, and for the students at Penn High School.”

Principal of Penn High School, Steve Hope, added, “Well Mrs. Tschetter just does a great job of building that relationship that’s so important to all student-learning to each and every student; harder with these big classes, like orchestra where she’s in charge of 2 to 300 students, is that she really gets to know each and every one, she knows when to push them, to support them, how to get each student to do their very best.”

A humble Mrs. Tschetter at the end of the event added, “This is something that I’ve never expected to receive, I’m shocked. I walked into the room with a wall of cameras and Dr. Thacker and my husband, and some friends and colleagues, and kids, and I’m I am shocked.”

She ended her thoughts with, “What I take away everyday is the joy that the kids have making music.”