Brooke Wheatley

I became a teacher because I was inspired by my mom who was a K-5 music teacher. I love history & wanted to bring history alive for my students. I love being creative & taping pictures of the Sistine Chapel under their desks to surprise them to paint like Michelangelo during our Renaissance unit or stage a mock battle with paper artillery to discover trench warfare during the WWI unit. I work in a Title 1 school & teach 12th graders who are first generation & push them to pursue their dreams.

I take my 12th graders on an overnight field trip from Las Vegas to Los Angeles where we go to the Holocaust Museum of LA & hear from a Holocaust survivor. Hearing from a 90 year old survivor from Auschwitz is a powerful experience that is life changing & will stay with my students forever. We stay overnight & then travel to the Manzanar Japanese Internment Camps in Death Valley before returning home. When the budget was cut I wrote a grant to fund to trip so my Title 1 students can attend free.

I would rent an In N Out burger food & throw a party for my students because I wouldn’t be eligible for this award without them! My upstairs bathroom flooded & desperately needs repaired & I would like to get it fixed. I would also like to take my parents to Hawaii as a thank you for all their support over the years and they are both turning 70 this year and would like to thank my mom for being an amazing teacher too! It would be awesome to share this experience with them, my husband and son.