District Teacher of the Year Brings Community to Classroom
By EMILY RAMSEY
Managing Editor
INTERNATIONAL EXPOSURE: Jo Anna Dossett, Owasso Public Schools’ Teacher of the Year, stands outside of her classroom at Barnes Elementary. She teaches English as a second language and found her career path after spending two years in West Africa.
EMILY RAMSEY for GTR Newspapers
Jo Anna Dossett, Owasso Public Schools’ Teacher of the Year, took her time finding her career aspiration; once she did, though, she couldn’t be stopped.
“I never wanted to be a teacher,” Dossett says, despite the fact that she grew up with two teachers for parents. Her mother taught special education at Barnes, and her father was a teacher and spent more than 20 years as principal of Owasso High School.
Dossett describes herself as a risk taker and thrill seeker, which explains why after earning a philosophy degree from a liberal arts college in Missouri, she joined the Peace Corps, which took her to West Africa. She spent the next two years there teaching English as a foreign language.
Little did Dossett know, those experiences would shape the rest of her life.
“Going to a foreign country where you can’t speak the language, you are isolated intellectually which leads to physical isolation because you can’t communicate,” she says. “It was a profound experience of not being able to communicate.”
So she set out to learn Crioulo, a common Portuguese dialect of the area. As she gained fluency, those feelings of isolation began to fall away, leaving her with the desire to share that feeling with others.
“I realized that I wanted to be the person who helps people communicate,” Dossett says. “I wanted to help people who are isolated in a place become more communicative and less isolated.”
When she returned to the states, she began working toward her goal. She is currently at Barnes Elementary, in her fifth year teaching English as a second language.
Dossett brings both passion to her subject and Spanish fluency, as well as a deep understanding of her community. “I know Owasso like the back of my hand,” she says. Dossett was born and raised in Owasso, attended Barnes Elementary and graduated from Owasso High School.
“I was planted here and raised here,” she says. “I have insight into the community and the school, and I can use that to help people become more involved and learn how we do things here.”
So much for not wanting to become a teacher. It seems Dossett never really had a choice. Besides her parents, her brother and sister-in-law are educators plus Dossett’s husband, Chris, who teaches percussion at Owasso’s 6th and 7th grade centers and the High School.
And Dossett isn’t looking to change anything any time soon.
“I feel like I have come full circle back at Barnes,” says Dossett. “I hope to stay as long as they will let me.”
Updated 06-14-2013
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