Rigby High School teacher needs community’s help to advance in ‘America’s Favorite Teacher’ contest
Published at
RIGBY — A local teacher competing in the “America’s Favorite Teacher” contest recently became one step closer to winning $25,000, a trip to Hawaii and appearing in Reader’s Digest, but she needs the community’s help to keep moving forward.
Dalynn Cross is an English teacher at Rigby High School who reached the quarter-finals in the nationwide contest. Cross said the competition started with 670 groups — each group consisting of about 100 people — but the competition is now down to about 1,200 people total. She said there are “fabulous teachers in the area” who are in the contest.
Voting for semi-finalists is happening now and ends Thursday, May 16, at 7 p.m. PDT. Cross must be in first-place to stay in the competition. As of Sunday evening she was sitting in third-place in her group.
“We’re talking from thousands (of teachers) to a little over a thousand to this next round will be, as I figure, a little over 100 and then the last round,” Cross, who was asked by a former student to apply for the contest, explained. “My life revolves around my students so the fact that anybody thought this was something I should put my name to was a great honor for me.”
Cross originally retired in 2023 after 35 years of teaching in Texas, most of the time at the high-school level. She moved to Idaho last summer to enjoy the “good life” and live near friends but within two weeks, she said she was “bored out of my skull.”
She applied and was hired to be a driver’s education in-car instructor at Sugar-Salem High School but that wasn’t enough for Cross. Although she is still a driver’s eduction instructor, she knew she needed to be back teaching in a classroom. Cross was offered a job at Rigby High School last August.
“I spend 25 minutes every morning in the cold, windy parking lot doing bus-duty before school and I get to see most of the students walk by. I see how amazing bus drivers encourage them, and I have a moment to encourage them as they walk by,” she mentioned. “Then I go inside to teach my 150 sophomores, and it’s a blast. I have the best students in the school so I’m really blessed from the moment I get to school until I leave.”
Cross, a cancer survivor and motorcycle rider, is not only a teacher in the classroom and driver’s education in-car instructor, but she’s licensed to be a school bus driver and is a former tennis coach.
“I keep those things because they are supporting roles for students,” she stated. “It’s the little things that go along with being a teacher.”
Cross said throughout her teaching career she has learned the importance of letting her students know she believes in them. She feels this contest is a “recognition” for her that her students also believe in her, and she hopes the community will too.
“Whether Reader’s Digest thinks (I’m America’s Favorite Teacher), whether Teach for America thinks that, whether east Idaho thinks that, my students believe that and that’s powerful,” Cross said.
If Cross wins, she wants to use the $25,000 to create scholarships for both her former and current school districts to honor hard-working students, buy better hearing aids (the reason why she said her students want her to win) and help a homeless relative in Texas.
To vote for Cross, click here. Supporters get one free vote every 24 hours and for those who’d like to cast extra votes, there’s the option to make monetary donations.
