Back to Their Roots: Four alumni return to East to teach math

Losing at state in 1983 didn’t kill then-senior Jennifer Horn’s love for softball. Despite the loss, she still decided to become a softball coach at East 17 years later.

“We didn’t do very well [when I was in high school] but we did finally get to go [to state],” Horn said. “I made a lot of friends playing softball. The coaches were really good and I enjoyed learning under them.”

Though she came back for softball, she remained for math. After coaching the JV softball team at Turner High School in Kansas City, Kan., she was ready for a change from the head coach. She began asking around and a neighborhood friend told her about an open softball position at East.

“I became a softball coach at East while I was teaching at Turner and then that got to where I was like, ‘Okay, this is hard to [work at] two different schools’ and there was a math opening at East,” Horn said. “So I applied for that and that’s how I became an East teacher.”

Though she stopped coaching in 2007, she’s remained at East ever since to teach math. While focusing on her teaching, she’s taken the same competitive mindset needed to play softball and adapted it to a classroom setting, inspiring students to never stop trying.

“I look at sports and education as something you have to practice,” Horn said. “If you’re not good at it, you have to get help from a coach or teacher to learn the skill and just keep practicing until you get to that final, whether it be a test or a game.”

Math always came easy to Horn but if she did encounter a difficult problem, she welcomed the challenge of solving it. The desire to get a question right urges her to continue trying, and she hopes that her students learn to think of math that way as well.

Horn knows that not all students have her competitive nature, so she takes time to work with students that lack confidence. She enjoys sitting down with a student and helping them understand a concept.

“My favorite part [of teaching] is when I get that kid that thinks they’re no good and I work with them and then the light comes on and they’re like, ‘Oh my God, I do get this,’” Horn said.

Though softball brought Horn to East, math is why she stays.

Then-senior Emily Colebank figured she would work in business.

It was her fallback — the safest option. She was involved with orchestra, chamber choir and the musicals every winter, but she wasn’t sure if business was the right career path for her.

But taking teacher Monique Goodeyon’s AP Calculus AB class changed that, inspiring Colebank to become a math teacher at East herself.

“When I had [Goodeyon] my senior year, I thought what she was doing was something that I would be good at,” Colebank said. “I feel like we’re very similar, personality-wise. And so throughout the year I was like, ‘I think I gotta be a math teacher.’”

Now, Colebank teaches math in the same Columbia blue hallways she walked as a student 10 years earlier.

Colebank uses her experiences at East to better relate to her students. She walked in the Lancer Day parade, so she knows how excited her students are about it. She hears chatter about chemistry and remembers putting on her own Mole Day shirt for extra credit on test day. 

“I think kids talk to me about things that they normally wouldn’t because I have this background,” Colebank said. “There’s teachers [still] at Indian Hills that I had and teachers at Highlands that I had, and so it’s really weird to be almost 28 years old and to be able to look at a freshman and for us to have had the same fourth grade teacher.”

Among the equations scribbled on her whiteboard and math posters on the walls in her room, she has a wall filled with East memorabilia — from her orchestra senior banner to Link Crew T-shirts. She doesn’t force anyone to talk with her about her high school experiences, but she enjoys discussing them.

“I just think it’s kind of fun for kids to see certain things and to see that not that much has changed [at East],” Colebank said. 

While Colebank enjoys that things at East like Lancer Day and school pride have stayed the same, her teaching job has given her a new perspective — allowing her to notice ways that East has improved. 

There wasn’t a day in high school where Colebank felt comfortable showing up without a full face of makeup or a well-planned outfit. Now, the attire at East has become much more casual. Colebank feels that she can wear jeans and a T-shirt, a combination her younger self wouldn’t wear in high school. Changes like attire have allowed her to think of her high school experience in a more positive way.

“I was a little worried coming back just because high school wasn’t always amazing,” Colebank said. “[But] I really like [it] now that I’m here and in more of a power position. I feel like all of the negative things have kind of been re-recorded in a way. I now see this building as the positive things that I did in high school and the positive things I’ve done as a teacher. So I think that’s really been good for me.”

Freshmen Jamie Kelly marched with his fellow bandmates as the sun rose over the East football field, perfecting their strides before the upcoming football game. After first hour marching band he was still eager for that night’s soccer practice.

Now in his 20th year of teaching, Kelly continues his passion for math and soccer by spending his days teaching Algebra 3 and his nights out on the soccer field coaching players at East.

For Kelly, band took up a third of his high school life along with playing soccer and watching Manchester United play after practice. And while Sporting KC was one of his favorite soccer teams, there was nothing he loved more than watching Manchester United. Soccer was his whole life — his time was constantly dedicated to the sport.

“I pretty much just played soccer,” Kelly said. “So I was kind of in my own world which is okay, I think that helps me with teaching because I can see that every kid has their own thing they like to do.”

In high school he looked forward to two things: team games class and soccer practice. Soccer was his motivation throughout the school day — it was why he had a smile on his face when the last bell rang and his favorite days were showing up to school in his jersey.

As a student, Kelly had no problem with math or science but wasn’t always on top of assignments because his mind was occupied with what would happen in his next practice.

Although it seemed destined that Kelly would become a math teacher due to his natural strength in math, his first idea for a job was a gym teacher. He thought that this would be his chance to coach and teach through one job — however in the end, schools were in need of math and science teachers. While this concerned him at first, it ended up being what he loved most.

Even with a setback in what he had originally planned, he received inspiration from those around him — specifically his uncle and teacher growing up.

“Skip Graham, who was a teacher here, who taught English,” Kelly said. “I grew up with his son who was my best friend. So, him being a teacher and seeing how he taught and then my uncle was a teacher in the Kansas City Missouri School District and taught for 40 some years. I looked up to them a lot.”

Kelly’s career started at Shawnee Mission West, though his original plan was to come back to East — he was a substitute teacher at West and would spend his nights at East as an assistant soccer coach. He remained at West for two years until a math teaching position opened up at East.

The love he has for his job comes from how different every day is with a different group of kids each hour and each year. With each new group of students comes different expectations and questions.

“I love teaching,” Kelly said. “I love coaching. So coaching both the boys and the girls is a lot of fun because it’s different coaching each side of them. I really love doing this. I mean, if you do something for 20 years, you’ve got to love it right?”

After being named the female “most likely to come back to East” in a Harbinger poll in 1992, then-senior Hannah Pence didn’t expect that to become a reality 26 years later.

Pence always loved seeing her teachers’ passion for teaching and the connections they made with their students. Her high school teachers were supportive of her becoming a teacher and helped her get the experience — they guided her on what classes to take in college and she was able to be a student teacher at Indian Hills. Though she never thought she’d be lucky enough to come back to the place those high school support systems began, she kept the faith and waited to accept a job offer to be able to stay in the Kansas City area.

“Obviously I thought it would be super to be able to come back at East and teach,” Pence said. “But I don’t think I ever really thought it would or could happen.”

Pence owes a lot of her motivation for her current career to her former teachers — especially math teacher Rick Royer.

“Royer was a huge influence,” Pence said. “He was my Honors Algebra 2 teacher my sophomore year. He loved math and it showed. He loved interacting with his students. He didn’t have any kids of his own but I think he would claim every student he ever taught as his own.”

Pence wanted to stay close in the area and her first job offer after graduating from KU in 1996 was in the Lee’s Summit area . Though she was excited to get a job offer, she declined it and waited. There ended up being a five-year teaching position at East. Years after applying, her old teachers continued to show support as they encouraged the school to hire her. So in the fall of 1996, she started as a math teacher.

“I was obviously really excited just to think it was actually going to happen,” Pence said. “It was very weird at first because a lot of my teachers were still here and insisted on me calling them by their first name.”

Pence’s co-workers were her biggest influences when she came back. In fact, Royer created the discrete math class — which later got passed down to her.

“I never took [the class] as a student but I had to learn it,” Pence said. “I had to teach myself so he helped me. When I was teaching it and I needed help I went to him without hesitation.”

Not only was her original support system there to back her up as the newbie to teaching, but they went from mentors to friends — something that’s made the teaching and East experience even more enjoyable.

“It was really neat being their colleague and getting to know them on a different level,” Pence said. “Some of the people that were my teachers are now really good friends of mine, which is kind of weird because when you were a student we never would have thought that at all.”

When Pence came to East, she never knew how much of an influence this school would have on her. 30 years later, she’s still walking in the same doors as she did freshman year.

“A lot of good things in my life are thanks to Shawnee Mission East,” Pence said. “So this is my way of trying to give back and help other students have great experiences and learn great things and finding success in their own life. If I think about it now, [I owe East for] my closest friends, my friends that I’ve graduated with or the people here that I’ve taught with.”