By Emily Williams
Homewood City Schools recently named its Teachers of the Year, selecting Homewood High School’s Michele Cooley as the top among secondary teachers.
“To be able to teach and teach well, one must acquire over time a variety of characteristics and traits that afford the educator the opportunity to be successful,” HHS Principal Dr. Zack Barnes said. “Mrs. Cooley possesses more of those traits than any other educator with whom I’ve worked in the past 20 years. Mrs. Cooley is aware of the pulse of the school and wants everyone, both students and teachers, to challenge themselves to make Homewood High School a better place.”
A graduate of Homewood High School herself, Cooley grew up being inspired by the teachers in her family as well as those in her classrooms.
“I grew up in a family of teachers, and I can remember ‘playing school’ in elementary school with the neighborhood kids,” Cooley said.
When it came time to choose a major in college, Cooley chose engineering, thinking more about the financial aspects of the career than personal fulfillment.
Remembering teachers at Homewood High School who inspired her to be the best version of herself, Cooley said she realized she lacked passion for engineering. She then switched her major to English and history, flirting with ideas of becoming a professor or attending law school, but in the end she accepted her love of the high school classroom.
“Ultimately, I wanted to be a teacher like the ones I’d had. Once I made that decision, I have never for one second doubted that it was the best choice for me,” she said.
In her AP English classroom, Cooley strives to help students become more familiar with the world that surrounds them through reading literature and analyze it through writing and discussion.
“My goal for my students each day is that they learn more about themselves and the world,” she said. “I try to ensure that every book, text, essay and lesson that we explore together is preparing them to be better citizens in an ever-changing world.”
Cooley said she encourages students to connect what they learn through the text of each book to larger issues at work in today’s world, whether the text is an older book such as “The Things They Carried,” or a newer piece such as “Between the World and Me.”
“A successful English class is based upon the key skills I believe students need to be successful in the world today: critical thinking, critical reading, discernment, communication, synthesizing and problem solving,” she said.
Each year, about 40 percent of Homewood High School’s junior class enrolls in AP English, which Cooley said is more students than in the past. She attributes the high numbers to the increased importance of good communication skills and critical thinking.
“No matter what field a student will enter post-high school, that student will need to be able to read critically and to communicate effectively,” she said. “I believe our community recognizes that and puts great value on those skills.”
Just as teachers are an example for their school and students, Cooley strives to give students the opportunity to actively take pride in HHS as sponsor of the Patriot Pride program.
Before working at Homewood, Cooley taught at Hoover High School, where she sponsored the school’s ambassador program, and she saw a need to introduce the same idea at Homewood.
“I really enjoyed working with the ambassadors at Hoover and saw first-hand how important their contribution was to the community and to the school. When I started teaching at Homewood High School and realized we didn’t have such an organization, I knew that I wanted to start one,” she said.
Students apply to be part of the program in which they are trained to act as hosts for the school. Cooley added that several students after graduating have been able to transition into the ambassador programs at the universities they attend.
Within the Homewood High School community, Cooley also takes time to act as a mentor to new teachers. With 19 years of teaching experience, her biggest piece of advice to new instructors is to follow their instincts when teaching and ask for help.
“If a teacher has a good support group, any problem, whether it’s curriculum-based or classroom management or just managing the paper load, becomes so much easier to solve,” she said.
There is strength in numbers in the school, according to Cooley, and having a good faculty support system is just as beneficial for the students. Teachers exchange their struggles and their triumphs and learn from each other, and students witness their instructors constantly working to hone their craft.
In addition to Cooley, Homewood City Schools named Hall-Kent Elementary School’s Lisa Littlejohn as Elementary Teacher of the Year. Each school selected a Teacher of the Year, including Edgewood Elementary’s Brooke Braswell, Emily Dunleavy of Shades Cahaba Elementary and Kevin Hughes of Homewood Middle School.