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Photo by Erin Nelson Sweeney.
Kira Aaron reviews a recent reading assignment with students in her ninth grade honors English at Vestavia Hills High School freshman campus on Jan. 11.
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Photos by Erin Nelson Sweeney.
Kira Aaron and her ninth grade honors English students discuss the different tones and voices present in a recent reading assignment, Daniel Nayeri’s “Everything Sad is Untrue,” on Jan. 11.
Kira Aaron remembers as a little girl lining up her stuffed animals in the playroom and “teaching” them how to write and count.
When she was in kindergarten and gained two younger sisters, her dad got hold of three discarded school desks, had them painted red, yellow and blue, and gave them to the girls as Christmas presents. It wasn’t long before Aaron had her sisters lined up in two of the desks and the stuffed animals in the other, teaching them all together.
Teaching just came naturally to her, she said. Both her parents were educators, and her grandparents were, too. “Teaching is the family business,” she said.
People in the Vestavia Hills school system recognized her gift this year, naming Aaron, an English teacher at the Vestavia Hills High School freshman campus, as the school district’s Secondary Teacher of the Year.
Melissa McIntyre, the music teacher at Vestavia Hills Elementary Liberty Park, is the Elementary Teacher of the Year. More on her to come.
Secondary Teacher of the Year
Aaron originally is from Dadeville, a small town near Auburn. After graduating from Dadeville High School in 2003, she went to Auburn University and earned a bachelor’s degree in English and English education.
She did an internship at Wacoochee Junior High School in Smiths Station and was hired to work full-time there for a year, until she got married and moved to Troy. She then taught two years at Elba High School and three years at Charles Henderson High School. In 2013, her husband, Oliver, got a job as the college counselor at Vestavia Hills High School.
They moved to Vestavia Hills, and Aaron took a couple years off teaching while raising three young children. One of the Vestavia Hills High School English teachers retired, and Aaron went back to work. She spent two years at the main high school campus teaching 11th grade English before a decision was made to start the freshman campus.
Aaron said, as a parent and teacher, she loves the idea of a freshman campus and jumped at the chance to be a part of creating the climate and culture of a new school, so to speak. “That has been so much fun,” she said.
She also loves teaching in Vestavia Hills. “I count it a blessing to work in this school system — a place where the community, the teachers and the school system all really value quality education and educational experiences,” she said.
In Vestavia Hills, teachers don’t feel pressured to do something different, such as become an administrator, because they’re good at what they do now, Aaron said.
“We encourage each other always to be better at what we do, so students can learn more and be more successful today and in the future, and figure out what success means to them,” she said.
Many students still haven’t figured out what they want to do with their lives when they leave high school, much less when they’re a freshman in high school, Aaron said. They may not remember their freshman English teacher, but she hopes she can light some fires and shine a light on some possibilities for them, she said. “I do hope they’re exposed to what they are capable of.”
Her four main content areas are grammar, vocabulary, reading and writing, but literature allows her to branch into a variety of other subjects as well, from history to ancient mythology, she said.
Bill Mann, the principal at the freshman campus, said Aaron is a passionate educator who adds value outside of the classroom. She understands the importance of collaboration among teachers to benefit student learning, he said.
Mann was so impressed with Aaron that he asked her to serve as a mentor for all the faculty who were new to the freshman campus this year. She has been doing that since August, and it gives them a safe place to talk about issues and concerns without judgment, he said.
“She’s the definition of what a teacher should be,” Mann said. “She makes students feel good about learning and … she has a way of challenging others to be better — by leading by example. If you had a building full of Kira Aarons, you’d have a very good school.”
Aaron said she benefited so much from relationships with other teachers when she was a new teacher as they poured their lives into her, even without a formal mentoring program. “They invested in me when they didn’t have to,” she said. “They gave me advice when I asked for it and sometimes when I didn’t. I know without a shadow of a doubt that made me a better teacher.”
Now, the state pays for mentors for first-year teachers, but Vestavia Hills takes that further and pays for mentors for people who may not be new teachers but are new to the system, she said.
“Providing support to new teachers is imperative,” she said.
But at the forefront of her mind is always the students, she said.
“I get to have 110 new people every single year,” Aaron said. “I get to pour into their development as humans, and I get to make a little difference in their lives.”
Elementary Teacher of the Year
Melissa McIntyre has known she wanted to be a music teacher since she was in middle school. “Music has always been my passion,” she said.
Her choir teacher at Ed White Middle School in Huntsville, Sherry Smith, was an inspiration for her, McIntyre said. When she was in the sixth grade, Smith allowed her to play piano accompaniment for the seventh and eighth grade choirs and go with those choirs on their trips to Washington, D.C., and she continued to allow her to play accompaniment the next two years as well, she said.
“She always encouraged me to lead. She just made singing fun,” McIntyre said.
McIntyre went on to sing in the choir at S.R. Butler High School in Huntsville for four years, and she played the xylophone in the school band during her junior and senior years. She then went to the University of Montevallo, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in music education in 1996.
She went to work at McAdory Elementary School as a music teacher in 1996 and stayed there 21 years, before moving to Liberty Park Elementary in 2017. She earned her master’s degree in music education from Montevallo along the way in 2000.
Now in her seventh year at Liberty Park, she works with about 550 children each week. Each class comes to her classroom for about 40 minutes each week to sing, play instruments or learn how to move to the beat of the music. They work with xylophones, glockenspiels and metallophones, and the older students get to work with drums, other percussion instruments, keyboards and guitars, she said.
She leads a handbell group of about 24 first graders called the Ring-Dingers, and they get to perform each year at a Veterans Day program in November and the city of Vestavia Hills’ Christmas tree lighting ceremony.
McIntyre also has two groups with whom she works after school. In the fall, about 40 to 60 students in the fourth and fifth grades make up the Liberty Park Singers. They also perform at Veterans Day and the city’s Christmas tree lighting and visit the Kirkwood by the River assisted living center to sing in December.
In the spring, McIntyre leads the Liberty Park Orff Ensemble, a group of about 30 fourth and fifth graders who play instruments and perform at the Vestavia Hills community fine arts night.
McIntyre also usually picks six to 10 fifth graders to sing with select students from all over the state at the Alabama Music Educators Association Elementary Music Festival each October. It’s much like an all-state choir. McIntyre has served as the festival director for the state association since 2019 but is about to turn over that responsibility to someone else, she said.
Tiffany Marron, the interim principal at Vestavia Hills Elementary Liberty Park this year, said McIntyre is great at giving students opportunities to perform outside of the classroom, noting that she also has taken students to sing at events at the Talladega Superspeedway at least twice.
McIntyre tailors her instruction to students’ individual learning styles and shows great flexibility based on students’ skill levels, Marron said. She has a strong work ethic and is always seeking to improve her craft through professional development, Marron said. “She is non-stop.”
McIntyre completed the rigorous certification process from the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards in December 2022.
She balances her approach to music education, including both theory and performance, which enhances the overall impact on children, Marron said.
“Melissa is just a gift — well-loved by her peers and children and families,” Marron said. “We have a special community here at Liberty Park, and we’re so glad to have Melissa be a part of it.”
McIntyre said she believes music is such an important part of culture, and she wants to share her passion for music with all the children.
“I just want kids to have fun in my class and to love music and to understand that music is something they can use to express themselves,” she said.
She doesn’t take for granted that she’s one of the few teachers at the school who gets to work with students every year they are at the school, she said.
“I understand the magnitude of that honor, that responsibility,” she said. “I get to watch them grow and mature physically, socially, academically, emotionally and musically. … I hope they know they can always count on me and connect with me.”
She’s fortunate to work in Vestavia Hills City Schools because the community and system value arts education, she said. That’s not the case in many school systems across the state, she said.
In some places, music classes are seen just as a place for kids to go while the general education teachers get a break or a planning period, but there’s much more to it than that, she said. Not only are there social and emotional benefits for children to learn about and experience the arts, but arts education also can be tied into other classroom subjects, she said.
McIntyre received a Community Hero Award from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama for her work in music education in May 2022. Outside of school, she is a member of the Alabama Tappers tap dancing group and a frequent attender of Auburn University football games to see her son perform in the marching band. Her other child died in 2011, and she heads up Team Liberty Park at the St. Jude’s Walk/Run in Birmingham each year to raise money to battle childhood cancer.
