Featured Teacher: Sarah Brockett

Every person has a different path and for some, the path will twist and turn so much you
don't even know what direction you are walking in, for our new 10th and 11th-grade humanities
teacher, Sarah Brockett, that was the case.

Sarah was born and raised in Breckenridge, Colorado. She had dreamed about
becoming a teacher since she was in high school, Sarah shared “When I was in high school I
thought I would be teaching in the Peace Corps, but that quickly disappeared.”

After high school Sarah attended college at the University of Rhode Island in 2009. She
graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, with minors in both History and English.
After college, Sarah worked in the hospitality industry for a number of years exploring different
jobs in the industry such as interior design and human resources.

Sarah's journey took her from studying abroad in France to college on the East Coast.
Sarah then moved to South Africa where she owned a game farm with around 550 acres, she
shared “ In this game farm, it was all fenced in, but we had our house with a pond. We had a
giraffe, 4 baby zebras, and some waterbuck too. Then there were free-roaming baboons,
hyenas, leopards, monkeys, all that type of stuff that would just be walking through the farm.”

After living in South Africa for a few years and witnessing the impact that severe poverty
and lack of access to education could have on a country, Sarah moved to Aztec and reunited
with her dreams of being a teacher. Sarah shares. She taught at Aztec High School while she
took classes to earn her teaching license.

Sarah joined the humanities department this year at Animas High School. she shared
“The connection between a successful world and education made me realize that's what I
wanted to do when we came back to the United States. I didn’t know much about project-based
learning but just reading about it and hearing people in the community talk about their
experiences with going to Animas made me really wanna teach here.” In this community Sarah
shares that she feels like there is a lot of pressure to make every lesson fun and engaging,
however, she finds this challenge as a way for her to experiment with different teaching styles
and keep teaching fun. “Since I've taught before, I'm adjusting fine with teenagers and
classroom dynamics. Now it's mostly about how do I expand this project to be 6-7 weeks long?”
Sarah shares. From teaching at a traditional school to a project based school she has had to
reteach herself how to teach in a way that is best fitting for the Animas environment.

Sarah has had to adapt her teaching style to match our school culture, however, every
day she continues to make a positive impact on students' learning, and encourages them to
follow the different paths life can take you.