Kimberly A. Searle, Copper Hills High, Jordan District

WEST JORDAN — Teaching was Kim Searle's backup plan. At 22, she eyed a European professional basketball career, then planned to seek an advanced degree in clinical psychology.

But the minute she started her student teaching at Sky View High School 20 years ago, she was hooked. Nothing beat watching kids "get it."

"I like seeing them discover new things, apply new things, and really ... make it meaningful in the real world," said Searle, Jordan District's Teacher of the Year. "That's still what I like, more than anything."

Searle's teaching career has spanned from a psychiatric facility to special education to Advanced Placement. She's spent 11 years at Copper Hills, and has taught history, psychology and sociology. She also has coached women's basketball and tennis and community sports, and in the early 1990s was honored as Utah Softball Coach of the Year.

She mentors teachers, manages a $400,000 federal grant to create small learning communities and chairs a committee for the school's improvement plan.

She even mentored principal Mary Bailey when she came to the school last February.

"She finds time to feed the hungry, in a sense that people who need her energy and talent, she makes time for them," said Bailey, who was Searle's seventh-grade language arts teacher. "She really is the teacher leader in the building ... she has more energy than 10 people."

Bailey is happy to help others, because, bottom line, it will help students. And students seem to know that's what she's all about.

"She's the one (who), after they leave high school, they want to reconnect with her, because she's the one that helped them believe in themselves," Bailey said. "Giving kids confidence to face life is so intangible. Kim does that."