The Mobile County Public School System has named two educators as its Teachers of the Year, honoring a Kate Shepard Elementary School teacher and a B.C. Rain High School teacher for their work in the classroom. Laniese Howard, a gifted education teacher at Kate Shepard Elementary, and Don Jones, who teaches aerospace technology within B.C. Rain High School’s Aviation and Aerospace signature academy, were selected as this year’s honorees.
School administrators surprised both teachers by showing up unannounced in their classrooms to deliver the news, a tradition many districts use to celebrate top educators in front of their own students. The surprise visits have become a signature moment of the annual recognition cycle in Mobile County, giving students a firsthand look at their teachers receiving one of the highest honors the district can bestow. For the honorees, the announcement typically arrives mid-lesson, with principals and central office staff filing in with balloons and certificates as the room erupts in applause.
Howard and Jones were formally recognized at a Mobile County school board meeting later in January, where the district publicly honored their contributions to students and their schools. Board recognition ceremonies give the honorees a chance to be celebrated before families, colleagues and administrators gathered in the board auditorium, and they mark the formal start of a honoree’s tenure as the face of teaching excellence in Alabama’s largest school system.
Both teachers were also set to move on to statewide competition, representing Mobile County as nominees for Alabama Teacher of the Year. The state program, administered through the Alabama State Department of Education, gathers honorees from each of the state’s school systems and eventually selects winners at the elementary and secondary levels, with one named the state’s representative in the national National Teacher of the Year program.
A peer-driven selection process
The selection process for Mobile County’s Teacher of the Year award draws from nominees submitted by individual schools across the county. Each school puts forward an educator it believes best represents the profession, producing a large field that must be narrowed before district-level honorees can be chosen.
This year’s finalists were narrowed down by a committee made up of school principals, central office administrators, and former Teachers of the Year, reflecting a peer-driven process meant to recognize educators who stand out among their colleagues. Involving former honorees in the judging gives the review a practical perspective, since those teachers have already carried the title and understand what the award is meant to celebrate.
The countywide approach matters in a district of Mobile County’s scale. With roughly 59,000 students and dozens of elementary, middle and high schools spread from the city of Mobile out to communities like Theodore, Semmes, Citronelle and Grand Bay, the school system is the largest employer in the region and one of the largest in the state, so the pool of nominees each year represents an enormous range of grade levels, subject areas and school communities.
The specialized work of gifted education
Howard’s focus on gifted education places her among the teachers responsible for identifying and nurturing academically advanced students within Mobile County’s elementary schools. Gifted education in Alabama is governed by the state administrative code, which requires specially trained certified teachers, formal referral and evaluation procedures, and a written plan of services for each identified student.
That role requires specialized training beyond a standard classroom certification. Teachers in gifted programs typically complete additional graduate coursework in characteristics of gifted learners, differentiation of instruction and curriculum design for advanced students, and they work with small groups of identified children whose needs can be difficult to meet in a traditional classroom setting. In elementary schools like Kate Shepard, which serves a neighborhood in Mobile’s Spring Hill Avenue corridor, the gifted teacher often becomes the point of contact for families navigating the identification process and for classroom teachers seeking strategies to challenge high-ability students throughout the regular school day.
Career-focused learning at B.C. Rain
Jones’s work in B.C. Rain’s Aviation and Aerospace academy reflects the high school’s signature academy model, which is designed to give students exposure to career-focused coursework in fields tied to the aerospace and aviation industries. Signature academies organize a high school’s curriculum around a professional theme, pairing traditional academic courses with technical classes, industry certifications and partnerships with local employers so that students graduate with both a diploma and a head start on a career path.
At B.C. Rain, located in the Plateau community of northwest Mobile near the Brookley industrial area’s historic aviation corridor, the Aviation and Aerospace academy has been among the most distinctive of the district’s academy offerings. Students can progress through coursework connected to flight, aircraft maintenance, aerospace engineering and related technical fields, and the program has benefited from the region’s deep aviation heritage, which runs from the wartime airplane production at what is now the Mobile Aeroplex at Brookley to the region’s present-day aerospace workforce.
Those industries have a growing presence in the Mobile area, including at Airbus’s final assembly line and related suppliers. Airbus opened its A320 family assembly line at the Mobile Aeroplex at Brookley in 2015, creating hundreds of direct jobs and anchoring a supplier network that stretches across the Gulf Coast. A skilled workforce pipeline is central to that growth, and school systems along the coast have responded with programs that introduce students to aerospace careers while they are still in high school.
What the honor means locally
Recognitions like the Teacher of the Year program serve a purpose beyond the individual honorees. District officials have long pointed out that teaching awards help with recruitment and retention in a profession that faces persistent shortages, particularly in specialty areas like gifted education and career-technical instruction where the candidate pool is smaller.
For the schools involved, an honoree’s selection also shines a light on programs that might otherwise go unnoticed by the wider community. Kate Shepard Elementary’s gifted program and B.C. Rain’s aviation academy are examples of the variety available within a single district, and the annual celebration puts those offerings in front of parents who may be weighing school options for their own children.
The January board meeting recognition formally closed the local phase of this year’s process. From there, Howard and Jones advanced into the statewide review, where a selection committee evaluates honorees from systems across Alabama on their educational philosophy, community involvement and teaching performance before choosing the state’s elementary and secondary Teachers of the Year.
Whichever way the statewide competition goes, Mobile County’s two honorees now carry a distinction earned through a process that begins in their own classrooms, moves through the judgment of their peers, and ends with their names presented before the school board and the community they serve.
Alabama’s statewide program
The Alabama Teacher of the Year program has operated for decades as the state’s premier individual teaching honor. School systems across Alabama each nominate a teacher at the elementary level and one at the secondary level, and the state department of education convenes judging panels to narrow the field through successive rounds. The finalists are traditionally honored in Montgomery, and the winners go on to represent Alabama in the National Teacher of the Year competition, visiting classrooms and speaking on behalf of the profession around the state.
For nominees from Mobile County, the statewide stage also means representing one of the most diverse districts in Alabama. The county system serves urban neighborhoods in the city of Mobile, suburban communities along the Eastern Shore corridor and rural stretches of the county, and its teaching force reflects that range. Honorees from large systems often note that the award belongs as much to their school communities as to them, since every nomination begins with colleagues who see the work up close each day.
The surprise announcement tradition
The practice of surprising teachers with unannounced classroom celebrations has become standard across Alabama districts in recent years. Administrators coordinate with school principals to time the visit, often bringing along district officials, school board members and sometimes former honorees. Local television stations and newspaper photographers frequently join the entourage, giving the winners a moment of public recognition that ripples through the community.
For students, the assemblies and surprises serve an unstated lesson: that excellence in the classroom is noticed and valued. Teachers who receive the honor often describe the reaction of their students as the most memorable part of the day, outlasting the certificates and the photographs.
Looking ahead
With Howard and Jones selected, Mobile County continues a tradition of sending strong representatives into the statewide competition. Previous honorees from the district have advanced far in the state process, and some have gone on to statewide recognition that brought attention back to their classrooms and their students.
The district’s emphasis on both ends of the instructional spectrum this year is notable as well. Honoring a gifted education specialist at the elementary level and a career-tech aerospace instructor at the high school level reflects the breadth of the modern public school mission, from serving the county’s highest-ability young learners to preparing graduates for skilled industrial careers that now include aircraft assembly in their own hometown.
Both teachers will spend the remainder of the school year in their classrooms at Kate Shepard Elementary and B.C. Rain High, where the work that earned the recognition continues daily. The titles they now hold will travel with them into the statewide review, and their schools will carry the distinction of having produced this year’s honorees regardless of how the state’s judging concludes.