English Teacher 9-12 and Department Chair

McCutcheon High School
Lafayette, IN

"I cannot picture myself in a job that didn't allow the level of creativity, the measure of independence, and the opportunity to make a difference in people's lives that teaching has provided me," says Sarah Powley, who teachers English at Lafayette's McCutcheon High School. In addition to being a driven and sought-after teacher, Mrs. Powley is active on many fronts of the educational project. She invites a challenge, and is glad to see more and more teachers involved in shaping school policy and curriculum development. "Teaches who take advantage of opportunities for professional development and assume responsibility for school reform experience exhilaration, not exhaustion; ownership, not frustration," she says. She has developed a model Honors English curriculum in the Tippecanoe School Corporation, and she has spearheaded an interdisciplinary program, "Beyond the Pages," to promote reading, literature and the arts. Mrs. Powley also believes that teachers should share their successful programs and practices; to this end, she has presented papers at national conferences, conducted workshops on teaching language arts to gifted students, and published in professional journals.