National Teacher of the Year Remarks at the Presentation Ceremony for Elaine Barbour.

THE PRESIDENT. This is one of the pleasant experiences that a President has, to recognize excellence of achievement in our country.

The selection of the National Teacher of the Year is a ceremony that takes place every year, which is an inspiration, not only to those who depend upon the schools for a vital force in our lives and those of our children but also because we recognize that to choose one superb teacher from the tens of thousands who serve is really a recognition of them all.

Elaine Barbour has been chosen this year as the outstanding teacher of our Nation. She was born in Kentucky, educated there and in Colorado. She taught in West Virginia, as well as Colorado, and because of her excellence and her ability to portray what America is, she also went during the summers in Sierra Leone and to Ethiopia to carry her superb teaching capability to those people there.

She recognizes, as demonstrated by her success in the classroom, some fundamental principles of education. As a sixthgrade teacher in Colorado she has especially benefited from the fact that children are different; teaching instruction bas to be different for each child. And she's brought a vivid awareness of life to the classroom environment.

She has encouraged her students, for instance, to take an old dilapidated, unpainted building and to turn it into a place of beauty. She's encouraged her students to dig a pond and to study aquatic life there and to let them have a real sense of the out-of-doors.

She's had a chance to plant more than 1,200 trees and to transfer to the school class area an old log cabin and to have the students help to erect it. It's now going to be used as a museum where the children can take in their discoveries of God's natural beauty and present it in an effective way as an additional teaching characteristic for the classroom experience.

I think what she's done has introduced her students in a practical human way to God's world, to one another, to 'herself, as their teacher, to the out-of-doors, and in the process, she's involved in an exemplary fashion the citizens of the community of Montrose and also the parents as part of the learning process of their children.

So, you can see that in a special fashion she has exemplified the finest aspect of teaching in our great Nation.

I'd like to read this presentation before I give it to her. "Elaine Barbour is recognized for achievement, creative excellence, and dedicated service to the youth and schools of the Nation, exemplifying the finest ideals and the highest standards of the teaching profession as 1978 National Teacher of the Year, selected by a committee of distinguished national educators in the 27th Annual National Teacher of the Year Awards Program and presented this 21st day of March, 1978, by the sponsors, Encyclopaedia Britannica Companies, Ladies Home Journal, and the Council of State School Officers."

I am very proud to present this award as the National Teacher of the year to Elaine Barbour on behalf of the people of our country..

And also I'd like to present an apple for the teacher. This crystal apple has also become part of the ceremony: "The 1978 Teacher of the Year for creative excellence and dedicated service, presented to Elaine Barbour at the White House."