Tell us why you became a teacher

I became a teacher because of my third grade teacher, Kathy Kottenbrook, and my mother, Ethel Bradford. Mrs. Kottenbrook took time and patience with me when others found it easier to just walk away. My mother inspired me by not giving up when she had a near fatal accident when she was younger, which led her learn to walk and talk again. She didn't give up. Both women taught me it was okay to be unable to do something as long as I didn't give up.

Tell us about your most memorable teaching experience

My most memorable teaching experience was teaching 6th Grade Reading in the late 1990s. One student who had never been to public school just so happened to be enrolled in my class. I worked with her on her social skills, as well as academics, especially poetry. For Teacher Appreciation Week, many years later, she came running down the hallway with a basket. The prize wasn't the basket, but the poem she wrote to me about if she could teach me. I still have the poem, which still makes me cry.

What would you do with the $25,000?

If I won $25,000, I think I would do something for someone else. I constantly buy things for students in my class, so they are very spoiled. However, my husband pushes me to keep going, even through the hardest of times. He listens to every funny, scary, and sad story that I have as a teacher. I think I would like to give the money to him to buy him another, badly needed, vehicle. If it were not for him, I probably would not have lasted this long.