Katelyn Leitner, a fifth-grade teacher at Pioneer Elementary School, recently was named the 2018 City-Wide Teacher of the Year.

A fourth-year teacher, Leitner has been known to stand on her desk and sing rap lyrics to help her students remember critical information. She started an after-school science club at the Whaleyville Community Center. She went out of her way to befriend a boy at Pioneer who wasn’t even her student at the time that she spotted him crying in the hallway. Now, he’s her student, and his confidence and participation in class have increased.

Above all, Leitner hopes to build relationships with her students, and it seems she has succeeded. One of her students this year, Summer Massey, recently said she “will be sad to leave her at the end of the year.”

Unlike many teachers, who get into education because of an inspirational teacher they had, Leitner had the opposite experience. There’s no one teacher that stands out in a positive way for her. But she is determined to become that teacher for her students.

“I hope I touch all of them so we have a relationship past fifth grade,” she recently told a reporter.

Also honored recently were:

• Middle School Teacher of the Year William Carter, a technology education teacher at King’s Fork Middle School.
• High School Teacher of the Year Kristen Ellis, a Spanish teacher at Nansemond River High School.
• Rookie Teacher of the Year Christopher Stadler, a music teacher at Northern Shores Elementary School.

These four are only a handful of the thousands of excellent teachers in Suffolk Public Schools, but they are representing well. We congratulate these four fine teachers for their well deserved awards and thank them for their hard work and dedication on behalf of their students.