For Award-Winning Teacher Katie Brown, Relationships Power Her Work

COLUMBIA, Ky. – Katie Brown did not take an education class on how to teach high school English during a global pandemic.

But that’s what the 2018 Lindsey Wilson College graduate learned to do when schools were shuttered because of the spread of COVID-19. She had been teaching for a little more than a year when education was turned upside down by the pandemic.

“Everybody will tell you that your first year of teaching is the hardest year,” said Brown. “In that first year, you learn a lot about yourself as a teacher, and a lot about what it means to work with young people. To be sent home in March and to not have much knowledge about how to do online teaching or how to teach in a hybrid format was super challenging. But it was also really great professional development for me. Now I have such a great skill set in terms of how to use technology to help my students learn in different ways.”

Brown has continued to excel as a teacher, as she was recently named the 2024-25 teacher of the year at Martha Layne Collins High School in Shelbyville, Kentucky.

“It was an incredible honor to be recognized by my colleagues and peers,” said Brown. “It really changed the way I thought about myself as an educator.”

Before teaching at Collins High School, Brown taught at Green County High School during the spring 2019 semester. A Baghdad, Kentucky, native, Brown said she was attracted to teach at Collins High School because it gave her an opportunity to “return home and give back to my community that raised me.”

Brown has certainly given a lot back to her community. She has taught mostly sophomore English at Collins High School, and she also established the school’s Advanced Placement capstone project. She serves as head coach of the Collins High School academic team and chairs the English department. In her spare time, Brown is involved with her local library.

The Power of Relationships

Brown came to Lindsey Wilson as an English major, then discovered the teaching vocation on her college journey.

“It felt natural to try out some of the education classes,” said Brown. “Once I met the Lindsey Wilson education faculty and got a chance to be in classrooms. I knew that teaching was what I was meant to do.”

At Lindsey Wilson, Brown also learned the importance of building strong relationships.

“The thing that is unique about the Lindsey Wilson education program is the deep community connections and relationships that we have with the Adair County public school system and with neighboring counties, such as Russell and Taylor,” said Brown. “All of the field placements that I had in my education program were with experienced teachers who were passionate about bringing up new educators. I think it was because of their mentorship and the mentorship of the Lindsey Wilson faculty that I felt like I had a good grasp of what it meant to impact teenagers in a positive way – and I had examples and opportunities to practice that before I was in my own classroom.”

It was teaching during the pandemic when Brown also drew on the power of relationships to help her students get through the challenging time.

“I had such strong relationships with my students because I had more time to deeply engage with the work that they were creating and to give them detailed feedback, and I also had more time for them to reach out to me for help,” said Brown. “While we may have been feeling a lot of social isolation during the pandemic, there was a lot of relationship-building and community-building that happened, at least in our school district and in my classrooms.”

A John B. Begley Scholar when she was a Lindsey Wilson student, Brown has returned several times to meet prospective Lindsey Wilson students on the annual Begley Scholars Day and serve as a panelist during scholarship interviews.

“It’s incredible. It’s one of my favorite days of the year,” said Brown. “Just to remember what it was like for me to be so nervous and scared, and also knowing what that opportunity can mean to students who do not have the means to afford a college education on their own. It is a deep honor to be able to be a part of that process and to get to meet some future Blue Raiders.”

Pictured: Katie Brown ’18, who was named Martha Layne Collins High School 2024-25 teacher of the year, stands in front of the W.W. Slider Humanities center, the home of Lindsey Wilson College’s English program.