Nanette Davis-Kirchhevel teaches her eighth graders at Palm Desert Charter Middle School that history is not just a list of dates, names or events to memorize and regurgitate. In her classroom, the humanities are a way to reflect on the choices people have made in the past and how her students can respond to injustice.
For the past 26 years, her students have become accustomed to visitors. Holocaust survivors, authors, archaeologists, judges and community leaders have come through their classroom to share firsthand stories and real-world context to their studies.
But the visitors who walked in on May 21 came for Davis-Kirchhevel, surprising her with the news that she had been named the first 2027 Riverside County Teacher of the Year.
“It was such an honor. It was a shock, it was excitement,” she said. “There’s so many adjectives I could used to describe that moment.”
She is one of four educators in the county who will advance to the 2027 California Teacher of the Year competition.
‘The wonders of history’
Davis-Kirchhevel, who goes by Nan, said the recognition has given her a chance to amplify the work her colleagues do, as well as the people and organizations that have helped make her classroom a place where students hear from the community.
One of the longest-running visits began more than two decades ago, when a since-retired teacher suggested contacting what is now the Jewish Federation of the Desert while students were reading “The Diary of Anne Frank.”
The first speaker was the late Earl Greif, the founder of Rancho Mirage’s Tolerance Education Center and a survivor of the Holocaust. For the past 17 years, Goldie Jacoby, also a Holocaust survivor, has continued to visit her students as well.
When Davis-Kirchhevel runs into her former students, one of the first things they ask is whether survivors still visit her classroom.
“It’s made that much of an impact on them,” she said.
But more importantly, she added, their stories stay with them because they carry a charge: “When you see injustice, say something, do something.”
In 2020, a former student even thanked Davis-Kirchhevel in the acknowledgments of her master’s thesis for introducing her to “the Jacobys and the wonders of history.”
And that matters in the humanities because students are not only learning literature, writing and history, but they are also learning to question why people make choices and how those choices affect others.
“What’s the impact it has on us, on our community, on our world and the future?” Davis-Kirchhevel said. “It becomes those bigger questions for kids to contemplate, but also to think about. Those are the skills we need, right? For our future leaders to truly be thinkers.”
‘A launching pad’
The tools inside her classroom look different now than when she started teaching at the middle school in 2000: paper grade books and slide projectors have given way to Chromebooks, interactive digital boards and artificial intelligence.
Students’ needs, however, have not changed as much.
“In the core of everything is (that) every one of us needs to feel valued, to feel like we can make a difference, that we have a voice,” Davis-Kirchhevel said.
She asks students to write from their own perspectives, challenge their thinking and consider viewpoints different from their own. Books and stories, she tells them, can be mirrors that reflect students’ own lives, windows into experiences beyond their own, as well as doors that invite them to step into other perspectives.
With just a few weeks before her eighth graders leave middle school for high school, Davis-Kirchhevel hopes that she and her classroom served as a “launching off point” where they learned to question, think critically and to trust their own voices.
“If they can see that every single one of them has something unique, something special about them,” she said, “then they will be successful in some arena of their life.”
Jennifer Cortez covers education in the Coachella Valley. Reach her at jennifer.cortez@desertsun.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Palm Desert teacher honored for a career of inspiring students
Reporting by Jennifer Cortez, Palm Springs Desert Sun / Palm Springs Desert Sun
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
