Here at the newspaper, we like to highlight students for their interesting hobbies and extracurricular activities, but we realized that there are a lot of people, other than students, at this school that deserve recognition as well. So we decided to add a new series of articles to feature the great teachers we have here at Boise High. To start off this new tradition, we have our wonderful news production advisor, Mrs. Kathryn Rotchford.

Rotchford currently teaches English classes and Journalism classes here at Boise High; however that was not her first dream. “I actually went to school to be an environmental scientist,” said Rotchford. She went on to realize that all of the math involved just wasn’t for her, so she changed her major and studied Anthropology instead.

After college, she went on to work in immigration law before and after the 9/11 terrorist attack, and once she moved to Boise, she worked at a law firm and volunteered at the Learning Lab, a literacy education center for adults and families. “It was when I was doing those two things at the same time that sort of this light bulb went off, and I noticed that I had always been teaching,” Rotchford explained. After this realization, she went on to grad school to get her degree in education.

Rotchford is an inspiring teacher, so it was interesting to find out what inspires the way she chooses to run her classroom. She uses her past education to guide her teaching today. “I had a lot of really great teachers who were great human beings who taught with a lot of enthusiasm.” However that is not the only thing that drives her as a teacher. She aims to make sure that the information she is teaching is relevant to her students, so no matter what they are working on, it will relate to something that each and everyone of them will experience. She teaches using politics, environmental issues, social justice issues, and many others. In her class, students have learned through studying the fracking process and recent, significant court cases like the Trayvon Martin case, just to name a few.

Although Rotchford truly loves every lesson she teaches, her main focus is more geared towards her students. “My goal as a teacher is to create informed citizens who are able to critically think.” She wants her students to be able to go out into the world and use the skills they learned in her English class, no matter what they decide to do. She wants to see her students succeed in life as well-rounded people.

While there is a lot of important information given to her students, that’s not to say that it is all serious all the time. Each and everyone of her classes has had their laughs. Rotchford struggled to decide what  the craziest thing to happen in her classroom was but eventually she said. “Three years ago in my academic support class, I had a student sneak in his pet rooster.”

Overall, Mrs. Rotchford is a unique individual and a determined teacher. She works hard everyday to meet the needs of every student that steps through her door. It seems safe to say that, much like many others in the staff, Boise High wouldn’t be the same without her.