Amarillo High School offers a chance to celebrate teachers by student nomination. The students vote for any teacher they would like to get awarded as teacher of the month.
Journalism teacher, Amy Burchett, and Dance teacher, Kaylee Morrison won teacher of the month last September.
Winning teacher of the month is a great honor awarded after a collective group of students pick the teacher best fit for the title. Last month’s votes were unanimous as to who won, with Burchett and Morrison getting a record-breaking amount of recommendations seen in a while.
“As a teacher, you wanna win every month, not necessarily the award but you want to have those winning classroom moments,” Morrison said.
Morrison felt very flattered about winning, she did not expect to win but enjoyed the thrill of winning and getting her month-long title. She is very supportive and encouraging toward her students and helps them in any way she can. Her students could not think of a better way to show how much they appreciate all of her hard work and effort.
“I think students should know that the little things that they write to send in really does mean a lot,” Morrison said. “We’re human too and we have bad days or we have days that we feel like are weak, being effective in what we do and those little bits of encouragement are really nice to look at and they mean the world.”
Many felt that Morrison deserved this award. Not only does she teach dance classes to provide any student with a fine arts or P.E. credit, but she also takes on the job of coaching the varsity and the junior varsity Sandie steppers dance team. She shoots for not only the big goals of teaching but also the small ones.
“It was a wonderful surprise, Burchett said.”
Burchett felt very surprised about winning. Burchett enjoyed the excitement of winning and getting to hold the title of teacher of the month for the first time in all her years of teaching at Amarillo high. She works very hard. She cares for her students more than most and her students thought that helping her win would help honor her and all she does.
“I try to prioritize the student over the work because I know that if a student feels confident in their knowledge, they are more likely to produce quality work,” Burchett said.
All of her students agreed that she deserved this award. Not only does she teach Journalism, but she also teaches yearbooks and newspaper, producing multiple publications for all of the student body to enjoy. She also runs the school’s social media accounts.
“Even if you don’t get teacher of the month, you receive the student notes which is always a day brightener,” Burchett said.“I hang them behind my desk to read on bad days.”
