The Rotary Club of Austin Westlake will present one teacher in the district with the Educator of the Year (EOY) award at its annual Eanes Employee Recognition Dinner May 1. The winner will be chosen from a pool of nine campus level EOYs, voted on by each individual school’s staff in April. Health Science teacher Michelle Derr won EOY at the high school.

Derr was teaching a Principles of Health Science class the morning of Apr. 10, when assistant principal Casey Ryan, principal Steve Ramsey, bookkeeper Judith Kimler, secretary Diane Dealy, student council members and mascot Chips paid her a surprise visit. They were clapping and excited as Ramsey announced to the class that Derr had won something. The visiting group then told her that she had won EOY at Westlake High School.

“Just to have that feeling of being acknowledged, or knowing that your fellow peers think that highly of you, is incredible,” Derr said. “It’s just great for my fellow peers to think about me that way. So I must be at the right place at the right time, doing my thing.”

This is Derr’s tenth year as a Chaparral. She began her career as an athletic trainer in her home state of Michigan for six years. She then came to La Grange ISD, which was her first time working in a Texas school. After two years there, she continued as an athletic trainer at Westlake before transitioning into teaching full-time in the Spring of 2018. 

“Coach Derr, if I could put it bluntly, goes farther than anyone else,” senior Connor Richarson said. “Every single second she spends in this school is done in service to her students. I very rarely have ever seen her even take a break from teaching during the school day because she’s always helping someone out.”

Derr has so effectively served her students that the Career and Technical Education (CTE) department has added several classes from the two Principles of Health Science (PHS) classes Derr originally taught before becoming a full-time teacher. Additions to the CTE include one more PHS class and Kinesiology levels 1 and 2. 

“Coach Derr is able to take [the athletic training] she’s done previously and share that with students in a very real way,” CTE chair Lindsey Stokes said. “She gives [students] hands-on experiences, … plus just her overall excitement in the classroom … keeps bringing kids back year after year.”

Stokes also admires Derr’s ability to build strong relationships with her students. Derr said she does this by getting to know them through activities like icebreakers and “Who Am I” projects in her PHS class. She likes to walk around the classroom and converse with students as they work on these projects.

“I just take the time to get to know my students,” Derr said. “I really, truly believe being a teacher and athletic trainer is all about relationships. It’s all about that trust.”

Richardson took PHS in his sophomore year. He describes it as a strongly project-based class, while he is a more test-taking oriented student. Without Richardson telling her, Derr noticed this incompatibility quickly. Although she didn’t change the course’s content, she started providing Richarson some extra support in project-based activities.

“There are group projects [in the class],” Richardson said. “But there are things that you can do within that group that are more of an individual capacity rather than working in the whole six-seven person group. It’s very catered to everyone.”

In addition to being a former PHS student, Richardson has been involved in HOSA, the future health professionals club of which Derr is the faculty sponsor, since his junior year. He recalls the day of his HOSA Sports Medicine competitive test last November. He and fellow competitors gathered in a classroom for some last-minute cramming and panicking. Derr was right there with them.

“She knew that’s not what would help us, and what would help us at that moment is instead just calming down and getting over the nerves as best as possible,” Richardson said. “It was just her being there [that] gave me the piece of mind. … She gave me … the feeling that my knowledge is enough and I don’t need to do anything else.”

Derr would even walk competitors to their testing rooms and debrief about the test with them afterwards. Richardson admits that although it sounds insignificant, that HOSA contest is a very clear memory in his head.

Now that she has won campus EOY, Derr will find out along with the rest of the district the district EOY at the May 1 Employee Recognition Dinner. If she wins, she will give a speech at the August Eanes Celebration of Excellence, which is a start-of-year event for all the district’s staff members. 

“I’m honored to be Westlake’s Educator of the Year,” Derr said. “If I don’t get District Educator of the Year, I’m okay. Teaching is incredibly rewarding. It’s not about us—it’s about the students. We’re here to be role models and support systems. But in the end, it’s you all, the students—who are going to go out there and change the world.”