PROFILE
Gay Beck
Utah State Teacher of the Year, 2011

Biography
Gay Beck currently teaches kindergarten at Highland Elementary in the Alpine School District and has also taught kindergarten in the Washington School District. She received her master’s equivalency from Alpine District and her bachelor’s from Brigham Young University. She was the 2011 Utah Teacher of the Year. In 2012 she was awarded the NEA Foundation Award for Teaching Excellence and traveled to China with 32 other educators as a Pearson and NEA Global Fellow. She serves as the Collaboration Team Leader in her school and is a district presenter for the implementation of the new state core on her grade level. She has educated young children for over 20 years and teaching is her passion! She loves seeing young students become readers, writers and mathematicians.
Gay is an active lobbyist for the Utah Education Association. She is also a member of the Univ. of Phoenix (SLC campus) Education advisory committee. She also loves serving as an advisory board member for the Utah Valley University Engaged Reading Conference.
Member of NNSTOY
We are a network of State Teachers of the Year and Finalists who use our teacher leadership to ensure that every student receives an outstanding education. We do this through our focus on practice, policy and advocacy.
We Believe...- Every student has a right to a high-quality education, regardless of background, race, gender, disability or socio-economic status.
- To achieve educational excellence for all students, we must transform and support the teaching profession.
- It is imperative that we involve our nation’s expert teachers in conversations about improving education.
- Teacher leaders will transform the teaching profession and create, implement and sustain systems to solve our toughest educational challenges.
- We must prepare our country’s future workforce to be competitive in a global economy and participate in a diverse, democratic country.
- Educators must partner with families and communities on behalf of our nation’s children.
Videos of Practice

Improving retention and bring joy to a young learner using the “See, Say, and Do” approach.
with Gay Beck
Improving retention and bring joy to a young learner using the “See, Say, and Do” approach.
Grades K-2