Beulah kindergarten teacher sees where it all begins Lauren Pilgrim became a teacher because of her fourth-grade teacher. Pilgrim said she always enjoyed teaching and she was doing it even when she didn’t know she was. Pilgrim viewed teaching as a gift and her passion, so she went back to school (she was a single mother) and received her degree in early childhood and elementary education from Virginia Union University. She started her career in Richmond City Public Schools and was awarded Teacher of the Year twice (when she taught at Clark Springs Elementary and Summer Hill Preschool Center); she…

Life has a funny way of directing you where you want to go, according to Anna Reilly. Reilly always wanted to teach since she was little, but she started out in another career before she switched to education. Reilly worked as an office coordinator for a medical equipment company and was a stay-at-home mom until her youngest child went into kindergarten. She received her teacher’s license after she went back to school and went into substitute teaching for Chesterfield County before becoming a kindergarten teacher at Ettrick Elementary. “I love learning … [and] education, and I think the biggest part…

Marguerite Christian Elementary’s Teacher of the Year had dreams of being a social worker and started her career at Richmond Memorial Hospital. Sarah Robenson did short-term rehabilitation and was responsible for assisting patients with care once they returned home, or she placed them in a nursing home if they weren’t able to go home. At some point, Robenson’s vision of being a registered nurse no longer aligned with the hospital’s, so she made the switch to education. Her 19 years of experience helped her with being a teacher, and she said she has more of an understanding because of her…

Kimberly Burnett is her classroom at Curtis Elementary. (Danielle Ozbat photo) “The louder, the better” is Kimberly Burnett’s teaching philosophy. She is a self-proclaimed “hands-on, out-of-the-box teacher” who likes to transform her classroom in order to keep her students guessing. “It’s almost like we’re in competition with their life outside of school and their video games and their constant movement, but we just really want them to love learning,” Burnett said. She has been teaching for 13 years, nine in Prince William County and four at Curtis Elementary. She has taught second and third grade, and currently teaches third-graders. Even…

Deanna Gravely When Deanna Gravely was a little girl, she wanted to be a teacher and had many influential cousins who were teachers. She would pretend to write on a chalkboard of her fictional classroom and line up her stuffed animals and dolls in a row as if they were sitting at their desks. Gravely started her career teaching English, but after finding the classroom too predictable, she became a librarian. Gravely has been in education for 20 years and has taught middle and high school. She said she enjoys teaching older students because she can joke around with them…

When Eleanor Kotowski applied to college, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to open her own business or become a therapist. She had an interest in education and even toyed with the idea of being an English teacher, but eventually settled on getting a bachelor’s degree in finance from Virginia Tech. Kotowski decided to hold off on grad school and worked in Washington, D.C., as a financial litigation consultant for three years. Outside of work, she volunteered as a tutor through a non-profit organization and realized she loved working with students. So she went back to school and got a…