The best teacher in Kentucky and the top high school teacher are from Lexington

An educator at Lexington’s Stonewall Elementary has been named Kentucky Teacher of the Year and a Lafayette High School teacher was named the state’s high school teacher of the year.

In addition to being named the state’s overall best teacher, Donnie Piercey, a Stonewall fifth grade teacher was also Kentucky’s elementary teacher of the year. He won $10,000.

Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman said that when schools closed in March, Piercey immediately created an online hub for learning to keep teachers and students connected. He set up virtual classrooms for other teachers.

Piercey has been praised for his real world instruction.

He graduated from Asbury College and earned his master’s from Auburn University. He has taught in Kentucky since 2007. Piercey uses technology to promote student learning and engagement. He received a National Geographic Grosvenor Teacher Fellowship to Antarctica and has co-authored The Google Cardboard Book: Explore, Engage, and Educate with Virtual Reality.

Christopher McCurry, has taught at Lafayette High School for ten years.

He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Kentucky and a second master’s degree at Vermont’s Middlebury College. McCurry is working toward principalship certification. He is exploring board games to see if they can increase retention of standards-based skills. McCurry co-leads Teachers for Equitable Kentucky Schools.

McCurry, a 12th-grade English teacher at Lafayette High School, is a poet and introduces his students to other Kentucky poets and authors. In response to racial unrest across the country, he developed a course on Black literature in America, a state news release said.

“I wouldn’t be the teacher that I am without my colleagues at Lafayette High School,” McCurry said, naming fellow English teachers Bob Howard and Meredith Dill.

“The students challenge me every day and push me to be a better teacher,” McCurry said in a Fayette schools news release.

The middle school teacher of the year was from a Jefferson County school. Laura Peavley is an eighth grade math teacher at Westport Middle School.

Now in its 20th year, the awards program combines the Kentucky Teacher of the Year Program and Valvoline’s Teacher Achievement Awards, formerly the Ashland Teacher Achievement Awards.

More than 2,500 teacher nominations were received for the Kentucky Teacher of the Year program and 209 applications were completed, a new record. In May, a committee of judges made up of highly respected educators from throughout Kentucky reviewed and scored each application.

Winners of the elementary, middle and high school Teacher of the Year awards, in addition to the overall 2021 Kentucky Teacher of the Year, were announced during a virtual ceremony.

“These award-winning educators represent more than 42,000 of their colleagues who are doing anything and everything to serve their students and ensure continued learning during the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Commissioner of Education Jason E. Glass.

This story was originally published October 22, 2020 at 11:38 AM.