Minnesota’s 2024 Teacher of the Year is a ninth-grade English teacher in Minneapolis, who is working to help pandemic-scarred students regain the skills they need to succeed in school.
Tracy Byrd, a ninth-grade English teacher at Washburn High School in Minneapolis, said students still want to do well but need a little more help than they used to.
“We have to help them get back to doing a lot,” Byrd said of his job as an educator after the pandemic — helping students figure out how to sit in a desk, interact with others and get better at reading and writing over longer periods of time.
“I find them where they’re at — and they’re all over the place — and then I get them to move a little bit.”
Byrd came to teaching after more than a decade in finance. He started working in schools as a hall monitor in Wayzata before his colleagues persuaded him to get an education degree and become a teacher. After receiving a master’s degree from Metro State University, Byrd was hired to teach English at Washburn High in 2017.
Washburn assistant principal Michelle Terpening said Byrd’s vigor, both in his classroom and as a football and track coach, is infectious.
“Anytime you walk past his classroom you can hear him,” she said. “He’s up, he’s loud, he’s vibrant. He brings an energy to Washburn.”
Byrd said his colleagues’ support and drive to help their students guided him as he became a teacher. Now, he said, his job is to inspire students by helping them use literature to see the world, and themselves, more clearly.
