It wasn’t always Sayre Posey’s plan to follow in her mother’s footsteps.
Her mom is a retired kindergarten teacher, and in high school Posey was adamant that she would pursue a career other than teaching. But after she started college at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, she missed being in a school.
“It just felt wrong,” Posey told KUER. “And I realized that the only career I wanted was to be in education.”
That determination paid off when the Salt Lake City School District U.S. history teacher was named Utah’s 2025 Teacher of the Year on Sept. 5.
Posey majored in history education and taught in Baltimore for three years after college. The Maryland native moved to Utah in 2019 to be closer to the mountains. Posey taught the Youth in Care program at West Jordan High School for a year before moving to Northwest Middle School in 2020. That’s where she now teaches eighth grade history.
If you ask Posey’s colleagues to describe her teaching style, the word “engaging” often gets repeated.
Northwest Middle Principal Andrea Seminario remembered walking by Posey’s classroom one day and seeing a huge crowd of students. When Seminario went to investigate, she didn’t find anything amiss. Posey was simply teaching a lesson on the Boston Massacre and had taped an outline of a body outside her classroom. Seminario was amazed that before the students stepped foot into class, they were already engaged and asking questions.
“It takes a lot of extra effort and energy, but so worth it because every child, including kids who were not in her classroom, was talking about the lesson.”
She added Posey also makes students believe they can do hard things.
“And that’s so powerful in a middle school setting.”
In order to engage students, Posey thinks it's important to have lessons that are relevant to her students’ lives so they see themselves in American history. She enjoys teaching history because she’s able to introduce students to a variety of perspectives and “not just the people who write the textbooks.”
More than 70% of students at Northwest are Hispanic. Posey said she teaches a diverse group who come into her classroom “linguistically gifted with many funds of knowledge,” and she incorporates those backgrounds in her lessons.
Last year, Posey had her students choose what they saw as an important turning point in history for the National History Day competitions. Most of her students, Posey said, chose topics that were related to their culture. That included Native American boarding schools in the U.S. and the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy.
Her students spent about six months working on the assignment, including time after school. Posey still gets chills when she remembers them setting up their exhibits in the school library and how proud her students were.
Posey’s students then competed in the Salt Lake Regional History Day competition. Five of them went on to the state contest and one received third place for their project on Jackie Robinson. That student was also an alternate for the National History Day competition.
Posey has run into former students at West High School football games who have told her they’re still proud of the work they did in her class.
“Seeing kids get motivated and excited about learning is what keeps me in the classroom and why I love coming to work every day.”
When Posey accepted the Teacher of the Year award at the State Capitol, she started off her speech by saying she wished her students could also be there.
“The only reason that I can be a great teacher is because I teach the greatest students.”
Last spring, when Posey was honored as the Salt Lake City School District’s Teacher of the Year, she said she loved that her students felt like they were being recognized alongside her. One student asked if this meant they were the “district’s students of the year,” to which Posey said “yes.”
“I love Rose Park,” Posey said of the community where she teaches.
When asked about the state of Utah education, Posey said she wished more attention was given to the needs of multilingual learners.
Posey has seen students who are put into English language development services when they are in kindergarten and struggle to test out of those classes. And if they don’t test out, that limits the electives they can take in high school and means they get left behind.
While unsure of what the solution is, she believes something needs to change to effectively serve multilingual students across the state.
“There is so much that people just don’t know about what it means to teach students who are multilingual learners.”
Another issue Posey sees is a disconnect between what is happening in Utah public school classrooms and what state lawmakers think is happening. Posey said she wants to work on bridging that divide.
As Utah’s Teacher of the Year, Posey received a check for $10,000 and will go on to compete against other state teachers of the year in a national competition.
She was selected by a committee consisting of representatives from the Utah State Board of Education, parent and teacher advocacy organizations, and charter schools
There were four Utah Teacher of the Year finalists who each received $2,000.
- Andru Jones, a special education teacher and football coach at Viewmont High School in Davis School District
- Andrea Settle, an English teacher at Juab High School in the Juab School District
- Shari Payne, a kindergarten teacher at Wasatch Elementary in the Provo City School District
- Seyyed Sharifi, a post-high special education teacher at Hartvigsen School in the Granite School District
Posey and the finalists will participate in a year-long cohort with the Utah Teacher Fellows.
