Growing up with horrible math teachers required Jennifer Boren to learn not only how to teach herself but inspired her to learn to teach others.

Faculty members voted instructional math coach Jennifer Boren the 2015 Teacher of the Year for Canyon High School in February. Nominees included speech teacher Stefanie Suto, choir director Brandon Farren, band director Mike Sheffield, social studies teacher Andrew Neighbors, math teacher Jessica Ray, and English teachers LeShea Millard and Diana Riha.

“I’ve only had bad experiences in the past,” Boren said. “All of my years of school, I grew up with horrible math teachers, so I kind of had to teach myself along the way. I said to myself over and over again, ‘It doesn’t have to be hard. Why can’t there be a teacher who can actually explain this?’”

When she was little, Boren used to play school and said she always wanted to be a teacher.

“I was the older child, so I was the teacher and made my sister the student,” Boren said. “But, I really had a moment when I was a junior in high school where I had a radical ‘Oh my goodness. I need to be a teacher’ moment. I had toyed with being a doctor or doing law school, and I really had a divine intervention where I realized I’m supposed to be a teacher.”

Neither of her parents worked in education, but both were teachers to her growing up. However, Boren said her grandmother was a teacher way ahead of her time.

“She is credited as one of the original starters of the Head Start Program,” Boren said. “She also did home-bound teaching a long time ago for girls who were pregnant. She really inspired me with her stories of helping kids like that and preschoolers who were from families that had no education. She was probably my inspiration.”

Unlike when her grandmother taught, Boren said state testing now binds teachers in core content areas.

“We do not have a lot of freedom about what pace we choose or how we choose to instruct kids,” Boren said. “We are bound to what the state says the kids have to know. Another downside is all of the political implications, paperwork and things we have to document and file instead of spending quality time with the kids.”

Boren has been a teacher for 15 years and has taught seven years at Canyon High School.

“My first year of teaching, I taught TAAS, which was the state test of the time,” Boren said. “I have never taught kindergarten or fourth grade. I have also taught on the college level. I am a math teacher, but my other teaching field is business. Not many people know that. I’ve never actually gotten to teach that.”

Before working at Canyon High School, Boren worked at Navasota High School and received two Teacher of the Year awards.

“I was named Teacher of the Year elected by the students during my first year of teaching at Navasota High School which is down by College Station,” Boren said. “That was in 1990. During my second year there, I was named Master Teacher of the Year, which was elected by the faculty.”

Because it is rewarding, Boren said she most loves teaching students who struggle with math.

“Teaching really means everything to me because I feel like it is my calling from God,” Boren said. “I love impacting students’ lives. I love watching them grow and learn not just about math or school, but about making better choices that will help them be more successful as grown-ups.”