Mathematics teacher Kristy Bishop of Washington state earns honors

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High school mathematics and CTE teacher Kristy Bishop has been named Washington state’s 2025 North Central Regional Teacher of the Year. Photo credit: North Central Educational Service District

How amazing are our nation’s public school educators? Very amazing, I must say. And one of these amazing teaches is Kristy Bishop, a mathematics and CTE (Consumer and Technology Education) teacher from Moses Lake in Washington. She has been named the 2025 North Central Regional Teacher of the Year.

Kristy has been teaching at Moses Lake High School for the past 25 years. There she instructs courses in Consumer Finance, AP Statistics, and Precalculus. She also performs the role of Community Outreach Coordinator for the Quincy School District. In addition, she has participated in several site-level committees, assisted in a large-scale book adoption, and coordinated a major technology adoption. And, as if all that were not enough, she has served as her Math Department Chair, as a mentor for new teachers, and as a union representative.

In her classroom, Kristy is known for fostering a respectful, professional, and compassionate learning environment. And she has a reputation for supporting developmental growth, for encouraging students to be their best selves, and with connecting with her students. In fact, she works diligently to build strong relationships that continue long after graduation.

Her curriculum is designed to have significant meaning for those enrolled in her courses. “Making [real-world] connections for students is not something that happens in a given lesson or activity,” Kristy declares. “It is a daily commitment to learning about and supporting my students as they work to accomplish their own goals.” The effort does not go unnoticed by her students. To show her how much they appreciate her, she has been honored as one of the school’s Staff of the Year in both 2023 and 2024.

This outstanding classroom teacher is a native of Moses Lake. Both her parents are retired educators.

Shelby Borst named 2025 Delaware State Teacher of the Year

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High school Social Studies teacher Shelby Borst of New Castle, Delaware, has been named her state’s 2025 Teacher of the Year. Photo credit: Delaware Live

I am always excited to share the story of an outstanding educator who works in our public schools. Today, I share the story of Shelby Borst, a high school Social Studies teacher from New Castle, Delaware. She has been named her state’s 2025 Teacher of the Year.

Shelby teaches college preparatory courses in Sociology and Advanced Placement Psychology to students in grades nine through twelve at William Penn High School. Some of the courses she teaches are dual enrollment. In addition to the courses she teaches at the high school, Shelby also facilitates distance learning courses in social problems, history of the Holocaust and cultural resilience.

Throughout her nine years in the classroom, Shelby has championed  practices that support students and cultivate an environment of growth. “I enjoy creating experiences for students,” declares Shelby, “whether that is something like the posters in my classroom, where they are navigating chapters on their own, and I’m there as a facilitator, or maybe it’s an interactive experience where they go on a safari and they have to figure out what has happened to the different people that are working within that safari,” she continues. “We just recently went on a scavenger hunt the other day for our perception concepts, so students were tasked with using their devices and technology to take photos of these perception concepts, wherever they see closure or similarity or continuity, and they were able to leave the classroom, and the world was theirs,” she explains. “The learning is in their hands, and I’m a facilitator,” she concludes. In addition, Shelby has led schoolwide Tier 1 initiatives designed to foster a strong, supportive school culture by emphasizing inclusivity, equity, resilience, and student engagement.

Shelby is not the only member of her family to go into to the profession. Her aunt was a middle school math teacher who taught special education students. “I remember she would bring me in during the summer. I would help decorate her classroom or help grade little things that she would be able to give me,” Shelby recalls, “So I’ve been around teachers my whole life, and I’ve gotten to see the insides of what it means to be an educator, so I definitely attribute that exposure to her.”

The Delaware educator earned her Bachelor’s degree in Social Studies Education from the University of Delaware. She earned her Master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction from Western Governors University.

 

The intrepid Hannah Breece describes teaching in the Territory of Alaska

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I always enjoy reading stories about adventurous teachers who have taught under the most unusual circumstances. One of these is Hannah Breece, a teacher who spent nearly a decade and a half educating Athabascans, Aleuts, Inuits, and Russians in the Kodiak Archipelago in the Alaskan frontier before the Territory became a state. I recently read about the exploits of this remarkable trailblazer in her memoir, A Schoolteacher in Old Alaska: The Story of Hannah Breece.

Hannah Breece was born in 1859 in Pennsylvania, where she inaugurated her career as a teacher. She also taught for a time in the Rocky Mountains. When Hannah first set foot on Alaska soil in 1904, the territory was a remote and lawless wilderness inhabited by indigenous peoples, prospectors, bootleggers, and Russian priests. Over the next 14 years, this intrepid teacher struggled to educate her students (and their families and communities) in the harshest of environments, and sometimes with the most limited of resources. Along the way, she carefully recorded the details of her work in her powerful eye-witness account, amply supplemented with her personal photographs. In addition, the volume contains maps, commentary notes, and an introduction by critically-acclaimed historian Jane Jacobs. Jacobs is the grand-niece of Hannah Breece.

Working in the poorest and most primitive communities, Hannah often provided her students necessary grocery supplies when food was scarce, and offered instruction in basic hygiene principles and homemaking skills, in addition to her innovative lessons on a variety of elementary-school subjects. Although she often expressed a condescending attitude toward native Alaskans—which reflect the prevailing attitudes of her day—Hannah’s commitment to her students was genuine and unwavering. Her adventures included dangerous encounters with snow storms, forest fires, and wild dogs.

Hannah’s spellbinding account, published in 1997 by Random House Books, can be found on this link at amazon.com.

Director of Bands Maximo Sierra led Pebble Hills High students in Rose Parade

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Music educator Maximo Sierra led the 300-member Pebble Hills High School Spartan Marching Band from El Paso, Texas, in the Tournament of Roses Parade eld on Jan. 1, 2025. Photo credit: Pebble Hills High School

There are many fine music educators who work with young people in our nation’s public schools. One of these is Maximo Sierra, who leads the student musicians that comprise the Pebble Hills High School Spartan Marching Band from El Paso, Texas. He directed the 300-member group in the Tournament of Roses Parade held on Jan. 1, 2025. This is the first appearance for the group in the New Year’s Day Parade.

The Pebble Hills band placed second in the 6A area marching band contest and advanced to state last year. The group also swept the competition at the Coronado T-Bird Invitational in Sept., 2024. The students have performed all over Texas.

Maximo Sierra, Director of Bands at Pebble Hills High School in El Paso, Texas, has been teaching student musicians for 23 years. Photo credit: Pebble Hills High School

In a career that spans 23 years, Director of Bands Maximo Sierra has taught the last eight of them at Pebble Hills High. He has been the only Band Director in the school’s ten-year history. During those years, he helped establish the school’s traditions, including composing the school’s fight song, a piece inspired by movie and video game scores. “It’s in a minor key and very different,” he explains. “We’re proud of it.”

Maximo earned his Bachelor’s degree in Music Performance from the University of Northern Colorado and his Master’s degree in Instrumental Conducting from New Mexico State University. There he was also a Teaching/Directing Assistant for the NMSU Pride Marching Band, Jazz II, and Concert Bands. Maximo is an active member of the Texas Music Educators Association, the Texas Bandmasters Association, the Texas Music Adjudicators Association, and the International Association for Jazz Education.