Lee’s Summit school leadership and elected officials gathered at Bernard Campbell Elementary School today to surprise social studies teacher Susanne Mitko.

Mitko has been selected to be a member of the 2024 C-SPAN Teacher Fellowship Program, a prestigious fellowship that accepts five awardees around the country per year. Mitko learned that she had been awarded the fellowship when the gathered officials made their way to her classroom for an impromptu celebration. Her students were told of the news the day before by the school principal.

“What a wonderful honor for a Lee’s Summit teacher to be awarded this fellowship among all the teachers from around the country,” said State Rep. Jon Patterson (R-Lee’s Summit). “You can tell Mrs. Mitko has a passion for teaching social studies and to watch her get surprised with this today was great. The students did a very nice job of keeping it a secret.”

Now in its thirty-first year, the program is designed for middle and high school educators who are familiar with C-SPANS’s programs and demonstrate innovative methods of incorporating them into classroom learning. Mitko and four other winners will convene in Washington, D.C. next year to develop curriculum using C-SPAN’s archived footage.

The selection committee cited Mitko’s plan to bring the C-SPAN Video Library to life for students by leveraging the archive’s collection of speeches from across time periods and looking for ways fallacies such as false dichotomies and straw man arguments have been used by public figures.

Mitko is a National Board Certified Teacher with over thirty years of experience as an educator. She currently teaches three gifted social studies courses at Bernard Campbell Elementary School. She was named Teacher of the Year in 2009 by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.