She planned to be a lawyer. Now she’s 2023 Kentucky High School Teacher of the Year

The woman named 2023 Kentucky High School Teacher of the Year Tuesday planned to be a lawyer.

But while studying for the law school admission test, Amber Sergent kept finding herself coming back to the idea of teaching. Now her influence is felt throughout Woodford County High School where she teaches social studies, a Kentucky Department of Education online article said.

“In working with Dr. Sergent, I have had the opportunity to witness firsthand how fair and equitable she is with students, in every instance demonstrating compassion and care,” Morgan Howell, principal of Woodford County High School, said in the article.

“I just absolutely love making history come alive. Whether it’s through music or words or art or photographs… dress up or play-dough,” she said in an article in the Jacket Journal, the Woodford County High School student publication.

Sergent is a co-director of summer school at Woodford County High School, and the director of Homework Club, an educational enrichment program, where she introduced a peer mentor element.

Football team academic coach

Sergent also is an academic coach for the Woodford County football team.

A few years ago, head football coach Dennis Johnson asked Sergent to help some seniors study for the ACT, the Kentucky Department of Education article said.

“These three students were offered scholarships to play football at the collegiate level, but they could receive significant financial assistance if they raised their ACT scores in two areas,” Sergent said. “What began as a singular activity to help three students became a coaching and advising position for our football program.”

Sergent stays late after football practice to help the student-athletes, and has come in on Sundays to work with the players who are in Advanced Placement courses.

“It takes a special person to understand the bond, the attitude and the ups and downs of an athlete,” Johnson said in the Kentucky Department of Education article. “She’s done really, really well. The athletic part is secondary compared to the academic part, and she’s really taken that by storm. Our football program and all our students have great respect for her.”

Sergent said her biggest professional accomplishment is that her students are loved.

She graduated from Pendleton County High School in 1996 and from Morehead State University in 2001.

She went to graduate school at the University of Kentucky to earn a master’s and doctorate in American history, where she was a teaching assistant.

Sergent was a teaching assistant at UK before she worked as an adjunct professor at Northern Kentucky University and Gateway Community and Technical College at Florence.

Sergent returned to Pendleton County High School in 2014 to teach social studies and earn a master’s of secondary social studies education from Morehead State University.

After spending three years in Pendleton County, Sergent went to work at Woodford County High School.

She said at Tuesday’s ceremony after being named the 2023 Kentucky High School Teacher of the Year that teachers recovering from the floods in Eastern Kentucky should be celebrated.

“I can name off so many teachers in Woodford County High School that make certain that students have food in their homes,” she said in the Kentucky Department of Education article. “And I think right now about the teachers in Eastern Kentucky who are going through so much personally and their hearts are so heavy for their students and what they’re enduring.”

She received a $3,000 cash prize for being named Kentucky High School Teacher of the Year.

Mandy Perez, a 6th-grade English and language arts teacher at Crittenden County Middle School, was named the 2023 Kentucky Teacher of the Year.

Julie Moore, a teacher at the School for the Creative and Performing Arts at Bluegrass Fayette County was named one of the 24 Kentucky Teacher Achievement Award winners in a program sponsored by Valvoline.