After spending one year teaching at Brownwood ISD, Haylee Brown is returning to her roots in Rising Star for the 2025-26 school year.

“This coming year will be my fourth year teaching,” Brown said. “I spent two years at Rising Star, this past year I was at Brownwood at Coggin, and I’m going back to Rising Star this coming year to teach second grade.”

Regarding her decision to become a teacher, Brown said, “I just felt like God placed it on my heart when I was going to college. I originally went to college for a completely different career. I got involved with the church and was working with kids and that’s when it clicked that maybe this is what I wanted to do. I had the dream of wanting to become teacher when I was little, but it went away.”

Reflecting on her days as a student, a family member influenced Brown – a 2018 graduate of Brownwood High School and 2022 graduate of Howard Payne – most to pursue a career in teaching.

“My aunt is a teacher and is one of the ones that played a big part of it as well,” Brown said. “She teaches at Brownwood, that was probably the main one.”

As for teaching second grade, Brown said, “Second grade is the age group I feel like still loves school, still loves to give hugs, but they also starting to get their independence. I feel like that age group is just fun to work with.”

The most rewarding aspect of teaching, according to Brown, is, “the part where I get to see the kids when the light bulb finally clicks. If they’re struggling with something and one day in class you can just see it in their face that they’re finally able to understand.”

Looking ahead to her future in teaching, Brown said, “I’m excited to just get to see the kids grow. Even though they leave the classroom and go to another teacher the next year, I always get to have relationship with them and I’m always cheering them on.”

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BrownwoodNews.com will highlight one Brown County educator per day in the month of July, based on nominations received on our Facebook page, for our Teacher Feature series.