Respect, leadership, and passion. According to veteran teacher of the year Jeanna Sutton, these are the most important qualities in life.

Hopeful for creating a better future for her and her family in 1993, Sutton’s career was put on hold to pour her love and dedication into raising her children, but she resumed her career in 2006 as an aide and then a full-time teacher at Argyle High School.

Now, she is a multi-award-winning teacher widely respected within the school and community. Throughout the challenges she has faced, her love for teaching and making a difference remains.  

This year Sutton will celebrate a total of twenty years as a teacher. It is also the first year she will be able to focus on her true aspirations of exclusively teaching leadership classes after teaching English for several years. While the world and Argyle High school change, she is continuously striving to make an impact in people’s lives and spread school spirit. 

“It’s really important to me that kids understand that they are leaders in their school,” Sutton said. “Whether they’re an introvert or an extrovert, everybody is leading someone in some way so leadership is kind of a passion and I’m excited about teaching that.”

Along with leadership, Sutton hopes to teach students to step outside of their comfort zone to support their school and peers. 

“My goal is to help build school spirit so that more people would be more willing to kind of be wild and crazy in the stands and come and just have a great time and not worry about what other people think and say and do,” Sutton said.

Sutton also emphasizes every individual’s importance in the school.

“School spirit is everything and I tell kids this all the time like we are all a part of the student body,” Sutton said. “Not all of us can play sports and do sports but we are all a part of the student body so every single person at Argyle High School plays a part.”

Overall, Sutton preaches a common theme of unity.

“We don’t all want to be alike at Argyle high school,” Sutton said. “We need to embrace our differences and we need to be respectful of people, even people that believe things we don’t believe, we can still be friends with them and we can still be kind to them.”

Each of her contributions continues to build her legacy, but Sutton’s focus is on the impact she makes on her students.

“I hope that when I leave here that they know that I love them and that I cared about them truly as a person,” Sutton said. “I don’t want them to just think I was here to teach a subject but I was here to make a difference in their lives.”