Ms. Laura Neeter is being recognized due to her success as a teacher at Hazelwood West High School. Neeter has been teaching for a total of 22 years, starting at West last year. Neeter has a way of making her students feel warm and welcome each time they enter the classroom. 

 In high school, Neeter was inspired by her teachers which helped shape her decision about teaching. Neeter knew who she wanted to be and who she didn’t want to be as a teacher. 

“It has just always felt like where I belong.” Neeter said. 

In high school, Neeter took a cadet class that allowed her to shadow a teacher which sparked her love for teaching. Soon after she attended Truman, Neeter knew what she needed to do. Originally planning to teach theater, Neeter was given an opportunity of a lifetime: a full time position to teach English, Public Speaking, and Debate. This experience inspired her to continue pursuing English as her main content.  

“My goal was to always teach English,” Neeter said.  

When Ms. Neeter was student teaching, the teacher she was working with said, ‘Don’t ever try to figure out what your hourly rate of pay would be because you would make 25 cents an hour.’ 

Neeter could work 24/7 and she would still never get everything done. She says teaching can be consuming and it’s harder being a single parent. Her kids have to sacrifice a good chunk of their time with her because she needs to get her work done. Neeter is a single parent with four kids and outside of school she chauffeurs her kids around for their various activities. She usually brings work home for her to grade or she will have planning to do or materials to create.

 “It all revolves around my kiddos.” Neeter said. 

The hardest part of teaching for Neeter is the discipline portion that comes with the job. This is because she didn’t want to go into teaching thinking about giving the consequences. 

“We want to go into this because we want to help children, or teens, or we like the age group that we teach, we really like the material that we teach and we want to pass that along.” Neeter said. 

The best part about teaching to her is that she gets to read, and gets to talk about reading and she hopes for her students to like reading or get better at reading. She loves to make connections with her students which she states is her favorite part of her job and she likes to get to know them as people. 

“I have always been good at communicating and explaining things to people and I love people… I found that when students can find themselves in what we’re doing, they are much more likely to put the effort in that they need to.” Neeter said. 

Neeter comes to school everyday with the mindset of thinking it’s a new chance. A new day to start fresh. 

“Doing this for 22 years, I still get excited to come to work everyday and I think that’s a pretty rare thing.” Neeter said.