For Januarys Teacher Of The Month: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the January teacher vote is and who runs it

For Januarys Teacher Of The Month is a public recognition vote run by KMXY, a radio station licensed to serve Grand Junction, Colorado, and broadcasting under the Mix 104.3 brand. The program is one of the station's community features rather than a standalone balloting product: it lives at mix1043fm.com itself, alongside the station's other contests and promotions. The vertical is local recognition, the same family as the best-of ballots that dominate Colorado's reader-vote calendar, but pointed at a single profession instead of a whole directory of local businesses.

The ballot page frames the purpose in its own opening lines. Teachers, it says, "are special individuals whose hard work should be celebrated." The page is titled Vote for January's Teacher of the Month, and it addresses supporters who have already moved past the nomination step: "Now that you've nominated your teacher for Teacher of the Month, it's time to vote." That sentence carries the program's whole shape, a nomination round followed by a public vote, and it is the reason the January window matters to the families and classrooms who take part.

Because the form is published on the station's domain rather than through a third-party host, a supporter's experience is shaped entirely by KMXY. There is no separate service to log into and no external operator whose rules sit on top of the station's. The table below pulls those details together.

The dated facts behind the January ballot

The program has a long published history for a local radio feature. Eight cycles are confirmed: 2018 through 2021, a missing 2022, then 2023 to 2026. That steady cadence marks the January teacher vote as a fixture of the station's community calendar rather than a trial promotion. A 2027 cycle would be the next expected run.

The timing that is fixed is the month: both the opening and the closing of the voting phase fall in January, according to the program's timing. The station pairs that window with the nomination round that precedes it, so the practical season for a nominated teacher starts before January does.

Beyond the month, KMXY does not print the opening or closing date of the January voting round on the ballot page; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The nomination form's dates are not printed there either. The page also publishes no category list, which is unsurprising for a single-teacher award, and it carries no per-supporter vote limit, daily return rule or eligibility text. No promotion round dates from an external balloting host exist, because no external host is involved. Supporters who need a precise deadline, for instance a classroom planning a final push, have to read it off the live page once the round is under way.

How a supporter votes in the January round

The mechanic is a straightforward two-step public vote published on the station's domain. Step one is nomination. The station's teacher of the month tag page spells out the handoff in its own words: "You've nominated them and now it's time to Vote for January's Teacher of the Month." A teacher has to clear the nomination step before appearing on the January ballot, so supporters who arrive in mid-January hoping to vote for a favorite may find that the work of nomination needed to happen earlier.

Step two is the vote itself, on the page at mix1043fm.com/vote-for-januarys-teacher-of-the-month/. The ballot page is direct about what it wants from supporters and why, and its framing text about teachers being celebrated is the closest thing the program has to a mission statement. Where the page stays quiet is the fine print: nothing there names a per-supporter cap, a stated daily return rule or eligibility conditions. The form itself is the only enforcement a supporter will see, and any limit it applies is the one that counts.

Because everything runs on mix1043fm.com, there is no third-party account to create and no external platform policy stacked on top. A supporter opens the station's page during the January window, follows the form as printed, and submits. Anyone planning a broader push for a nominated teacher can read the outreach side in our guide to strengthening support in a public vote, and the standing question of paid support is addressed separately at the legality page.

Where this ballot sits among Colorado reader votes

Colorado has a dense calendar of public-vote programs, and the January teacher ballot occupies a distinct corner of it. Most of the state's high-profile ballots are city or regional best-of directories run by publishers: Top of the Town from 5280 covers Denver across a wide category grid, Best of Denver from Westword does the same for that paper's readers, and Best of the Springs, Best of NOCO, Best of Summit County and Best of the Boat extend the pattern across the rest of the state.

The KMXY program differs in three ways. Its market is Grand Junction on the Western Slope, not the Front Range corridor where most of those directories concentrate. Its subject is a person rather than a business, a nominated teacher instead of a restaurant or a shop. And its scale is a single award in a single month rather than a seasonal directory with dozens of categories. That narrowness changes the competition: a supporter is not pushing a business up against a whole field of local merchants, but rallying a school community around one teacher during one January window.

For a business or a family active in more than one of these programs, the mechanics differ enough that tactics do not transfer one for one. A nomination-gated single-award ballot rewards early organization in a way a broad best-of directory does not.

Strengthening support for a nominated teacher

Because this ballot is nomination-gated, the most consequential work happens before January: making sure the teacher clears the nomination round at all. Once the January window opens, the useful moves are the ones the station's own structure permits. Share the ballot link directly, since the page lives at mix1043fm.com and every click lands on the station's form. Mobilize the natural constituency a teacher already has, families of current and former students, and time the push for early in the window, because the closing date is not printed in advance.

The ballot page is silent on outside help and organized voting, and it names no per-supporter cap, so the form's own behavior is the only visible limit. Our votes service page describes the general options people consider, and no outside vote service, ours included, can deliver a certain outcome in a poll the station runs itself. What holds in every case is the ballot's own shape: one teacher, one month, one station's form deciding the result.