Meet the Teacher of the Year

Palm Coast Observer
Neighbors

Sarah Poppe was named Flagler County Teacher of the Year Thursday, Jan. 12.

Flagler Palm Coast High School Reading Coach Sarah Poppe began her teaching career at a young age, with her brother as her first student.

When she was a kid, her grandfather built schools, and slowly, the garage at her grandparents’ house, where she lived with her immediate family, transformed into a mini school.

The wall was lined with a real chalkboard, and her students sat in real desks, from schools that her grandfather refurbished. Poppe even made her own worksheets.

By playing school, Poppe found her love for teaching.

She became more certain where she was heading when her high school guidance counselor told her that the best teachers already are teachers.

“My mom and grandparents saw that I already had those qualities,” she said.

Before moving to Flagler County, Poppe taught 12th-grade English in New Jersey, her home state, and reading at Campbell Middle School, in Daytona Beach.

Now, Poppe has a home at FPC, where she has been since 2006. She taught intensive reading and ninth-grade English her first year and has held the reading coach position for the past five years.

“It’s crazy how teaching reading is so different from teaching English,” she said. “When you’re teaching someone how to read, you are teaching them strategies. One is content, one is strategies.”

In her position as reading coach, it’s not just about teaching students anymore. Poppe provides professional development for teachers, as well. She creates modeling lessons, instructs teachers how to implement the best practices in their classrooms and develops ways to promote literacy throughout the school.

“It’s such an awesome and big thing,” Poppe said about being named district Teacher of the Year. “I want to make our county proud and everyone I’ve learned from proud.”

But like most teachers, Poppe doesn’t stop doing her job when the afternoon bell rings. In addition to getting her doctorate in educational leadership and being pregnant with twins, Poppe can be seen at sporting events as the head softball coach, supporting her husband, Steve, who is the head baseball coach, or selling tickets at football games.

But more than getting honored for her hard work, for Poppe, teaching pays off when she sees how her students and softball players have grown.

“The best part is seeing the difference in kids when they come back and visit you, seeing what they accomplish,” she said.

EMPLOYEE OF THE YEAR
As Barbara Korn sat in the auditorium Thursday, Jan. 12, at the Teacher/Employee of the Year ceremony, she thought to herself, “I don’t belong in this category.” As a VPK instructor at Bunnell Elementary’s Early Learning Center, Korn doesn’t consider herself support staff, but a teacher.

When her name was called as the 2012 Flagler Schools Employee of the Year, Korn said, she was stunned.

“The biggest honor was to be nominated from Adult Ed.,” she said. “To get it for the district is actually surreal. I consider all my co-workers to be educators, and I think I’ve made a big impact because of that.”

Before coming to teach in Flagler County, Korn taught fourth grade and kindergarten in Palm Beach County. But in her fourth year at Bunnell Elementary, Korn says, she has fallen in love with early childhood education.

“It’s nice to make a change for the positive,” she said. “Being with the kids, watching them develop, the funny things they say … ”

But above all, Korn says the most important part of her job is to attend as much training as possible. In the last three years, she had taken more than 130 hours.

“If (children) don’t leave my classroom knowing letters and letter sounds and sight words, they are going to be behind,” Korn said. “It’s good to keep up with the latest research.”