After graduating from Yelm High School in 2018, Kyle Johnson set his sights on one day becoming a teacher at his former high school so he could give back to the community he said gave so much to him.
On Sept. 5, Johnson’s goal of teaching at YHS became a reality as he served his first official day as a teacher in Yelm. He’ll be teaching earth sciences in agriculture to incoming freshmen as it’s a required course. Johnson will also serve as an advisor for Yelm’s FFA club.
“With returning to Yelm, I’m looking forward to being able to give back to the community that helped make me who I am. Where I am now, I owe almost everything to my high school experience.. Being able to give back to the community who brought me to who I am today was my ultimate goal as a teacher,” Johnson said. “I’m overjoyed and more than ecstatic to be here back at Yelm. I hope that the proof is in the pudding with how I’m able to help these kids become better individuals and better human beings after taking my course.”
While he was a student at YHS, Johnson stayed actively involved in the school’s FFA through courses and extracurricular activities, such as competing in events and showing animals. He was also a member of the FFA officer team.
“Directly after graduation, I took a year of service as a Washington FFA state officer,” Johnson said. “Over that year with my team, I visited over 100 middle schools and high schools across the state.”
During his time as a Washington FFA state officer, Johnson delivered speeches and workshops at schools for students. He also lobbied at the State Capitol.
After Johnson’s year of service ended, he was accepted into Washington State University and declared his major as agricultural education.
At WSU, Johnson took the majority of his early-year courses in the College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences school. During his junior year, Johnson was accepted into WSU’s college of education, where he took all of his teaching courses.
After graduating from WSU and completing a year of student-teaching, Johnson said he immediately jumped on completing a job application once a job opening was available at YHS.
“The idea of teaching back at the same high school I graduated from would ultimately be my end goal. I want to teach in the same community I came from and help out the youth in my community,” he said. “Honestly, it means more than anything to me. My thought when I was graduating college on not being able to teach at Yelm High School was that I could teach elsewhere for a couple of years, but the second a job at Yelm does open, that’s where I’d want to be.”
The new YHS teacher said he’s also excited to teach with colleagues who used to be his teachers and FFA advisors while he was a student.
“I find great joy in that and being able to work with familiar faces. Yelm High School, having such a large ag program, has a team of colleagues that can all work together,” Johnson said. “Part of the reason I wanted to be back so badly is, working with such a great team, ultimately we can provide the best education to the students, and that’s any teacher’s goal. We want to create more positive, contributing members to society once they graduate.
“I greatly enjoy the opportunity at hand. When I was in high school and they were my teachers, yes, they were my educators, but I also thought of them as friends and mentors. Coming back, I still look at them as mentors and look up to them. I aspire to be a great teacher like they are too,” Johnson said in reference to the agriculture teachers and advisers at YHS. “I look forward to seeing (Matt) Mounts and (Hilary) Hull every day. When I was in high school, they were the two teachers I had the most classes with. I formed a good relationship with them.”
Though he’s excited for his first official school year as a teacher, Johnson said he still has a lot to learn about the position. He knows every classroom is going to be different and said he looks forward to getting to know his students as fast as possible in order to better fit all of their needs and requirements.
Johnson added that he wants to create a “fun and chill” environment in his classroom so his students can feel safe and welcome.
“When kids come to school, I want them to think if there’s one class they’ll go to for their day, they want to go to school because of Mr. Johnson’s class,” he said. “They’ll know if they go to Mr. Johnson’s class, they’ll leave feeling like there’s a reason they went there. Maybe they’ll laugh that day, they had a good experience, they enjoy the relationship I’m able to build with them, but I want them to be able to say ‘I want to go to school today because I want to go to Mr. Johnson’s class.’ ”
