That’s right. Minnesota’s 2019 Teacher of the Year, Kelly Holstine, was standing in a row of teachers on the football field to be honored as Teachers of the Year when she decided to do something that none of the other teachers did ‐ she knelt down and took a knee. She wanted to make a statement against the bad Orange Man.
The honoree from Minnesota, Kelly Holstine, chose to kneel during the national anthem at the NCAA football championship game on Monday, where the ceremony took place, "to stand up for marginalized and oppressed people," according to a tweet she wrote, which included a photograph of her kneeling.
"Like many before, I respectfully kneeled during Nat’l Anthem because, ’No one is free until we are all free,'" she wrote, referencing former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and citing a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
My initial reaction was probably like a lot of adults ‐ ugh. The worst part of the story, for me, is that she is a teacher. This indicates to me that she probably also plays the part of a social justice warrior in the classroom, too. Minnesota’s Commissioner of Education apparently approves and rewarded her with the honor of Teacher of the Year. Perhaps it is a naive request but I’d like to see teachers held to a higher standard as the educators of the next generation. Conflating Colin Kaepernick and Dr. King tells me that she is arrogantly justifying her behavior while boosting her own ego. She was presenting herself as a teacher, not a random protester.