LifeChanger of the Year Nominee Profile

Baylee Teagarden was nominated by her outgoing principal, Phil Bressler. 

In every school, there are people who make a difference. However, there are those rare souls whose efforts at building relationships and validating the worth of individuals goes above and beyond what others are willing to give, truly creating a culture change, one student at a time. At Paola High School, Baylee Teagarden is that LifeChanger.

From day one, Ms. Teagarden began bouncing ideas of how to improve her department and the overall climate of the school. She took charge of a new course, and in its second year, it became the most requested course in the high school. It was so popular that they turned away more students than they were able to enroll. The enrollments in her other elective classes also grew markedly, causing the school to achieve record enrollments in the PE department with nearly 75% percent of students taking at least one PE class. This was a marked shift.

This spring, Ms. Teagarden saw a need for more health education, especially on the mental health side of the equation. She revamped the traditional freshman PE/Health class into a semester-long health class, with components of physical health, emotional health, and well-being. To do this, she has handed over the reigns of the most-requested course to a colleague so she could work where she felt she had the most leverage in the long run.

Ms. Teagarden has lobbied for new equipment to provide her students with a broad base of physical opportunities and to maintain high engagement levels for classes of 30 or more students. The addition of heart rate monitors to her classes allowed her to individualize workouts to student needs, and create a grading system based on student effort related to ability instead of a hard and fast one-size-fits-all approach. Adding the DrumFit to her curriculum gave students another engaging avenue to find joy in exercise, and she has plans to share the new equipment with her district's elementary schools in the coming year. Her efforts have taken her school from considering a decrease in staff to needing an additional teacher if funding allowed.

The story behind this growth is a woman who gives her all to her students. She has revived a department that had reached a stagnancy by reaching out to students and encouraging them to try her classes. She has engaged the students who are holdovers in her classes and fostered a renewed energy. Ms. Teagarden's a positive, upbeat part of the staff who sees potential where others see negativity or indifference. She brings a kind face and kinder words to students who need it, yet she possesses the ability to keep her students accountable for their attitude and effort toward reaching their potential. She's the teacher one hopes their child has.

" In my 25 years of education, I've never before observed a new teacher become so endeared to so many students in such a short time. That endearment is not hollow and is due to her love for them and her unwavering commitment to their growth and development," Bressier said. "During graduation practice, I asked our seniors to identify the staff member in our building who is most responsible for their completion of high school. Of 125 seniors, several identified Mrs. Teagarden or, as many of them fondly refer to her, "T". And I'm quite confident if we were to do the exercise with all 600+ students, her name would be offered with a similar, if not greater, percentage."

Selfless, committed, dependable, caring, unassuming, humble, hungry, focused, a great teammate, and loves kids. That's Ms. Teagarden in fourteen words.

"I'm leaving Paola High School at the close of June to assume a new position in another district," Bressier said. "If I could choose one employee to take with me, Baylee Teagarden would be the unequivocal choice. She's everything you want in a teacher and, for me, the best hire I've ever made."