No one can say that special education teacher Stacey Middleton backs down from a challenge. After working five years at alternative schools in Fayette County, Middleton was allowed to choose her next assignment. In 2001, she picked Bryan Station High, the only Title I high school in Lexington. “So many of our students have disadvantages, […]
Is it only coincidence that Shearer Elementary in Winchester sits on Broadway? After all, music teacher Collin Berner has turned the school into a mini-Broadway production company. In March, the school finished a six-performance run of Disney’s “The Lion King Kids,” which played to rave reviews and sold-out audiences at Leeds Center for the Arts […]
What does Lauren Moorhead think about her job as an eighth-grade science teacher at Jessie Clark Middle School? “It’s unfair,” she said. Right, because science is tough and middle schoolers are even tougher? Nope. It’s the opposite. The only thing she loves more than teaching science are her students. “Middle schoolers get a bad reputation, […]
Welcome to Nugent Nation. That’s Amanda Nugent’s third-grade classroom at Huntertown Elementary in Versailles, where the national motto is “Never Settle for Less Than Your Best” and where all children receive a hug from their teacher every morning. Her students came up with the name for the room and even created a digital flag. Taking […]
Sherry Botts has always had a heart for children in Title I schools. That feeling started when Botts was a child helping her aunt, Wilma Gooden, who taught in a Title I school back home in Glasgow, Ky. So when Botts was assigned as a student teacher to Harrison Elementary School, she felt right at […]
Renee Ware’s math classroom at Baker Intermediate School in Winchester has been home to nearly everyone in her family. She’s spent all 23 years of her career in the same building – and has taught sixth, seventh and eighth graders. Both of her sons passed through her classroom – Jake as an eighth grader, Nate […]
Step into Counselor Michelle Kelly’s office at Bourbon Middle School and feel yourself relax as soothing music drifts from a speaker behind her desk. The overhead lighting is switched off in favor of strands of soft lights hanging from the ceiling and over a tree in the corner. A curtain depicting a Zen garden adorns […]
When you’re promoting a good product, there’s nothing wrong with a little salesmanship – even in the field of public education. That philosophy has worked for Robin Featheringill, a math teacher and coordinator of the pre-engineering program at Leestown Middle. A six-year veteran at Leestown, Featheringill was convinced she could double the pre-engineering program when […]
You’ve heard about being joined at the hip? How about joined at the kidney? That’s the case for Curriculum Resource Administrator Marci Smith and custodian Ivan Graves, co-workers at, and fellow graduates of, West Jessamine High. Friends for more than 15 years, the pair increased their kinship a year ago when Smith donated a kidney […]
Even after two decades in the classroom, the end of the school year remains an emotional, bittersweet time for Mary Henry, a fourth grade teacher at Wilmore Elementary. “I’ve been blessed with such amazing students,” she said. “I’m realizing that I have just a few more days with them and I’m going to miss them […]
