Being widely known as National Teacher of the Year didn't faze Mary Beth Blegen, who patted President Clinton on the shoulder after he spoke in her honor in the White House Rose Garden. After that 1996 ceremony she asked herself, "What are you doing, Mary Beth? You put your hand on the arm of the president of the United States!' "
Remembered as an intense but kind teacher who helped students no matter the time or place, Blegen, 72, died Jan. 25, a month after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
"That ability to listen and not preach," was how her son, Mark Blegen, described her special qualities as a teacher. "She was also so humble. She would never tell anyone she was National Teacher of the Year. She would say, 'I'm Mary Beth; now tell me about you.' "
Blegen, who most recently lived in Lakeville, was a humanities, writing and history teacher at Worthington High School when she was named Minnesota Teacher of the Year in 1995. The following April she became the fourth Minnesotan to receive the national award.
"We can't just be purveyors of knowledge anymore," Blegen told the Star Tribune then about the teaching profession. "My kids did a project on the dropping of the bomb, and they got 62 pages of information off the Internet. Nothing I can give them can compare to that. But they have to be able to figure out stuff … who's writing it, whose viewpoint are you looking at."
A former student, Carolyn Ann Smith, said Blegen taught the importance of asking questions and was relentless about critical thinking.
"She was a force to be reckoned with and always very welcoming to all of her students," said Smith, now a teacher herself in Green Bay, Wis.
Smith, then Carolyn Wolf, performed in Worthington High School's fall drama production "The Diary of Anne Frank" under Blegen's direction. She learned "the power of being able to tell a story like that on stage," and the experience inspired her to become a teacher.
