Shanna Peeples
Superman Hall of Heroes inductee Shanna Peeples is the 2015 National Teacher of the Year, earning this honor for her work with students who are refugees. As the 2015 National Teacher of the Year, Shanna is shaping the conversation in this country about working with students in poverty, and those who have already faced extreme challenges in their young lives. Through a variety of teaching methods, Peeples reaches her students and helps them achieve their full potential far beyond her classroom walls.
Shanna Peeples took a circuitous route to the classroom. She worked as a disc jockey, medical assistant, pet sitter and journalist before teaching, as she says, chose her. Now, Peeples is an advocate for public education. “Public schools,” she says, “are a stabilizing force in society and a fierce promoter and protector of our democracy. They have given so many of us a vision of ourselves and what we might become. They help us to find the most treasured thing any of us have: personal meaning and our contribution to the common good.”
Shanna is an English teacher at Palo Duro High School in Amarillo, Texas where she teaches Advanced Placement students, English Language Learners who speak a total of 27 languages, and struggling students in both day school and the school’s evening credit recovery program. For half her school day she is an instructional coach for literacy strategies. After regular school hours, she teaches English and Speech in PDHS’s FLEX night school. Peeples’ principal, Sandy Whitlow, says of Shanna: “She does not shy away from challenges; she embraces them as an opportunity to grow and learn as a teacher, illustrating that a great teacher is first and foremost a learner.”
As the 2015 National Teacher of the Year, Shanna is shaping the conversation in this country about working with students in poverty, and those who have already faced extreme challenges in their your lives. Through a variety of teaching methods, Peeples reaches her students and helps them achieve their full potential far beyond her classroom walls.
Shanna has taught the past 12 years, four of them in her current role. She earned an Associate’s degree from Amarillo College, a Bachelor of Arts from West Texas A&M University and a Master of Education from the University of Texas at Arlington.
