MBJH ‘lifelong learner’ and teacher named to top 16 ATOY

When Pamela Pugh was younger, she would play teacher with her younger brother. Using an old desk that her aunt, who worked at a local school, gave her as a gift, and some worksheets her aunt would bring home, Pugh said “I would just give them to my brother and make him do them.”

It shouldn’t come as a surprise then that Pugh has been teaching middle school or junior high level students for a number of years, the last six of which have been at Mountain Brook Junior High. She teaches ninth-grade English and college prep English. 

Most recently, Pugh was named as one of the top 16 Alabama Teacher of the Year finalists by the Alabama State Department of Education, not long after she was named Mountain Brook’s Secondary Teacher of the Year.

“I was shocked. I was absolutely shocked that it was me,” she said first of the district nomination. “I teach in a school with some amazing teachers that I have actually [learned from]. … The teachers around me are the reason I’m the teacher I am today.”

The state finalist results were announced April 8 and included Pugh among prominent teachers from around the state.

“That was not even on my radar,” she said. “I had no idea that it would go this far, so I’m beyond shocked, humbled and definitely honored to be in this position.”

Pugh said in everything that she does for teaching, she tries to emulate her high school English teacher, Ms. Palmer. Pugh said she was “very influential” in her life and her decision to teach.

“Because of her love of English and her great relationship with all of her students, I was just motivated to kind of do exactly what she did,” Pugh said. “I still remember and I still emulate things in the classroom the way she did things 30 years ago.”

Teaching is something Pugh loves and gets excited about. She said she still looks forward to her morning drive to work and seeing all her students, and she comes alive when she walks in the classroom. Along with the many novels, plays, papers and essays she works on with her students, Pugh also tries to show how the content is all relevant today. 

There’s “a lot of life lessons that go on through English class,” she said, and she does her best to connect the studies to her students’ lives and what is happening in the world. 

A big part of what she focuses on much like Ms. Palmer, is building relationships with her students to help them succeed. 

To help her better connect and better understand her students, Pugh has a master’s degree in counseling so she can work on socioemotional education. It helps her identify needs that students have, like anxiety over certain issues or things that might be happening at home, and take care of them so her students can learn better.

“My main passion for teaching, literally, is the relationships that I develop with my students. … That’s what it’s all about — it’s about the students, it’s not about the content or their performance,” she said. 

Pugh said she’s looking forward to growing as a teacher and learning from others. 

“I’m a lifelong learner, that’s just who I am. And I feel like I’m always going to be that way,” she said. 

The 2019-20 Alabama Teacher of the Year, Ana Carolina Behel from Florence’s Weeden Elementary School, was announced on May 8 in a ceremony in Montgomery.