She’s only taught high school for two years, she works in an underserved department, she’s built a professional team in one year, and has now been named teacher of the year, Miss Kerre Cole. Cole was the only English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher last year after the previous staff had all left. She worked throughout the 2023-24 school year as the singular ESL teacher.
Cole, before this position, taught internationally in places such as Prague, Buenos Aires, and Geneva since 2012. Moving back closer to family in Texas during the pandemic, Cole had to recertify herself for teaching as Texas did not recognize her international certifications.
“I was lucky enough to be in the interview where Miss Cole was interviewing for the position and she crushed it,” 2023-2024 English department chair and English teacher Erin Balfour said. “She clearly knew about language acquisition. She knew her content. She also seemed incredibly excited to work in a public high school, and really motivated in this community. And so, she was just a perfect fit. It was very clear she was a top candidate and we were so lucky that we hired her and that she’s been here.”
During that year, Cole had bloated class sizes and multiple languages to account for in a single period, making serving those students extremely difficult for a singular teacher.
“We’re in chemistry, we’re in algebra, we’re in biology, we’re in US history, and we go in and help those teachers with their Emergent Bilingual population get better and better,” Cole said. “And now that we have a full team, we can finally do that properly. And that’s really the key.”
Having come from the international teaching space, Cole had to make large adjustments to her teaching style to fit the Texas public education system.
“[In some countries] they have you choose what you’re going to do when you’re 14 or 15, and it starts you on a work path,” Cole said. “It’s really, really different compared to what we do, here we wait until we’re 18 and then we sort of decide what we’re going to do and try to go study somewhere”
Since last year, ESL expanded by three more staff members, Francisca Choque, Samantha Trevino and Daniel Londono, Cole acting as the coordinator of the team.
“She’s started from just herself,” counselor Brandon Tate says, “[She] now supports…a very large and diverse number of students within [the ESL] department and just really takes the initiative to guide the team, be in the trenches and really work collaboratively.”
Various teachers and staff believe Cole has done well in her position, and cited reasons they chose to vote her for teacher of the year.
“For a young teacher in the sense of being new to this environment, she is doing things that a veteran teacher does,” Balfour said. “Her professionalism poised in a positive attitude makes her a clear choice for teacher of the year.”
