Why Do You Love Your Gold Star Teachers?

On April 17, the McElroy Trust announced the winners of the 2012 Gold Star Teacher award, a yearly honor bestowed on the Cedar Valley's top educators. Teachers were nominated by others and were then selected from a competitive pool of over 1700 nominations.

This year, ten area teachers are garnering the award, which comes with $1000 and recognition at a May 21 awards ceremony.

We want to know - what do you love about the teachers who were honored this year? What memories do you have of being in their classrooms or having your children in their classrooms? Tell us in the comments.

Here are the four Cedar Falls teachers who are being honored this year:

Shelly Bromwich, preschool teacher,

Kenton Swartley, physics teacher,

Kim Vandendriessche, kindergarten teacher,

Shelley Schlatter, kindergarten teacher,

A huge Patch congratulations to these teachers and the six others named Gold Star teachers. The full list of honorees is available here.

Also, check out the tribute to Mr. Swartley in today's Cedar Falls Tiger Hi-Line .