Teachers we love:
Capital High School english teacher Julie Kidd

By Jodi Durham
Capital High School

Ever had a teacher who was impossible to get away from? For some students at Capital High School, that teacher is Julie Kidd.

The advanced placement English teacher has only been in the business for one year and four months, but already she has followed her students from their sophomore to junior year of high school.

“My kids have started calling me George Feeny,” she joked during an Open House at the school, referring to the teacher on “Boy Meets World” who followed Corey and the gang through most of their education.

“I told them I was following them to college as well,” she said.

Student Aaron Sizemore called Kidd “cool and fun,” but what do he and his classmates really know about her? What lies beyond her persona as a teacher? I decided to find out.

I walked into Ms. Kidd’s room early on a Thursday morning, aiming to find out more about a woman I only knew from inside the classroom. The true definition of a teacher, she sat at her desk with students’ papers piled in her hands.

“If I wasn’t a teacher, I would be a park ranger. I really like the outdoors,” the West Virginia University graduate said as she discussed her life. This was just one of the many interesting facts I discovered when talking to her.

Another one is that she’s a mountain biker. “I love to mountain bike. I even have my own little helmet to help me when I crash into trees,” she said.

The more I talked to her, the more I saw that Kidd’s persona in the classroom — a teacher whose broad sense of knowledge is coated with small sprinkles of spontaneous humor — is no façade to trick students. Instead, she is just as humorous and nice outside the classroom as she is within it.

“Pay has nothing to do with it,” she said of her job. “I really care about the kids, and at times I think I care too much.”

A teacher who loves her job and her students, Julie Kidd is an asset to Capital High School.