By SEAN BOSTON
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Wiley Elementary School third grade teacher Kyle Welliver has been named the Allen Samuels Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram Teacher of the Month for November, recognized for her commitment to students, her classroom leadership in USD 308.
The person who nominated Welliver praised her as, “the absolute best at the 3 most important things…instruction, relationships, classroom management. Her students and families love her. She is highly respected by her peers! Kyle is humble and takes great pride in her call to service! If you’re looking for a teacher worthy of this award who embodies all the good things about teaching and leaving… Kyle is the person! It’s an honor to work alongside her each day!”
Welliver is in her 20th year of teaching, spanning time in Iowa and Kansas.
“I’ve been teaching for, gosh, this is I have to count them up, my 20th year, and that’s between I lived in Iowa for nine years, and then I taught at Morgan as a PE teacher for nine years before we moved to Iowa,” she said. “Then I taught the whole time I was there, and then I’ve been back here for, this is my second year back in Hutch.”
She said she always knew teaching was her calling.
“I can’t imagine myself doing anything else,” Welliver said. “My grandma was a teacher. My aunt is a teacher. And like I grew up playing school with my sister and my friends. That’s like the first thing we would play. And I just, I can’t imagine what else I would have done as a career. It just that’s what I’ve always loved.”
Returning to USD 308 felt natural.
“I’m comfortable with 308 and I really enjoy it there,” she said. She recalled that her Kansas teaching license arrived the same day she learned of job openings at Wiley. “It was literally the day my Kansas license came in the mail… and my friend texted me, and she’s like, ‘You’re going to come work at Wiley next year.’… So that was perfect, because that’s really, I can’t imagine teaching anywhere else.”
Welliver said this school year has been one of her best. “It’s been really great. I have such a sweet class,” she said. “This class just fell in a routine so quickly this year that we have just been able to, you know, do a lot of things this year because they fell into such a great routine so quickly.”
She said Wiley’s culture is what makes the school special.
“The students, the staff, are amazing… the people there are so genuine and so kind and like you just feel comfortable instantly.”
Her Teacher of the Month celebration, which included pizza donated by Pizza Hut and ice cream sundaes donated by Braum’s, came as a complete shock.
“Oh, my goodness, that was the biggest surprise,” she said. “I never, in my wildest dreams, would ever expect something like that… I still don’t have the right words to say, like, what a surprise it was.”
Her students were just as thrilled.
“They thought it was the coolest thing ever,” Welliver said.
One student repeated in awe that the award honored a teacher “in all of Reno County.” “They loved every moment of that, too,” she said. “They’re my biggest fans. They’re my biggest cheerleaders. That’s for sure.”
For Welliver, the reward is the relationship she builds with each child. “Just building those relationships with them,” she said. “I feel like I know them so well… watching them grow and learn throughout the year is amazing as well.”
