Log in

Veterans, kindness and a new teaching certification

Posted 8/10/22

Kim Flowers worked in the front office of Fountain Hills High School last year, but she will be a freshman English teacher and club leader this year. Flowers is bringing back the Veterans Heritage …

You must be a member to read this story.

Join our family of readers for as little as $5 per month and support local, unbiased journalism.


Already have an account? Log in to continue.

Current print subscribers can create a free account by clicking here

Otherwise, follow the link below to join.

To Our Valued Readers –

Visitors to our website will be limited to five stories per month unless they opt to subscribe. The five stories do not include our exclusive content written by our journalists.

For $6.99, less than 20 cents a day, digital subscribers will receive unlimited access to YourValley.net, including exclusive content from our newsroom and access to our Daily Independent e-edition.

Our commitment to balanced, fair reporting and local coverage provides insight and perspective not found anywhere else.

Your financial commitment will help to preserve the kind of honest journalism produced by our reporters and editors. We trust you agree that independent journalism is an essential component of our democracy. Please click here to subscribe.

Sincerely,
Charlene Bisson, Publisher, Independent Newsmedia

Please log in to continue

Log in
I am anchor

Veterans, kindness and a new teaching certification

Posted

Kim Flowers worked in the front office of Fountain Hills High School last year, but she will be a freshman English teacher and club leader this year. Flowers is bringing back the Veterans Heritage Project (VHP), a statewide service project that was started by a former Fountain Hills teacher, and she’s also introducing the Golden Rule Club.

In 1998, students in Barbara Hatch’s history class wondered if the story in the movie “Saving Private Ryan” was true. Hatch wrote to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and a member of the Fountain Hills VFW organized a group of WWII veterans to speak to the class.

Hatch continued to bring in veterans each year, and her students started an after-school club in 2004. The veterans shared their service stories, and students submitted recorded interviews to a national military history archive called the Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

Since 2005, the Club has spread to 30 high schools in Arizona, and each year students publish veteran stories in volumes of a book called, “Since You Asked.”

Fountain Hills has not had a VHP sponsor in several years, but the mission hits close to home for Flowers. Her husband is an army reserve veteran, and her late grandfather was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor after administering lifesaving plasma on the battlefield in Okinawa. Tom Brokaw wrote a chapter on Bob Bush, her grandfather, in his book, “The Greatest Generation.”

“He lost his eye, had a lot of other injuries, but was still healthy enough to come back and start a business,” Flowers said. “That’s why Tom Brokaw chose him to be part of his book, and it was a really special time for our family to have his story told. For me, that’s why I’m passionate about this. My war hero grandpa had his story told, and I think all veterans should have a voice to their history.”

Last year, Flowers received an email from Robert Modrow asking why the club wasn’t active in Fountain Hills. Modrow is affiliated with the Fountain Hills VFW and American Legion and has had his story told by the VHP. Thanks to his email and connections, and Flowers’ own connections, she has a list of local veterans who are interested in participating in interviews this year. Anyone who is interested but not on the list can reach out to Flowers at kflowers@fhacademics.org.

“A lot of work is frontloaded in the beginning of the year,” Flowers said. “Finding the veterans, scheduling the interviews, all of that gets done by the end of the second quarter. So, it's the first part of the year that’s the intense part of the work, but really, it’s not that difficult for students to become engaged.”

Flowers will host VHP meetings every other Monday at lunch in her classroom. She’s designed it to work in tandem with the other club she’s starting, the Golden Rule Club (GRC).

Golden Rule Club

GRC will meet on alternating Mondays and will focus on service projects and doing random acts of kindness around campus.

“That wave of positivity can kind of self-perpetuate, and we just want it to be a fun, enjoyable place to go to school,” Flowers said. “I think that happens when students are kinder to each other.”

The first big event Flowers wants GRC to participate in is Make a Difference Day. She also said that near the end of the year, GRC will host a talent show called Random Acts. Both clubs will also offer student leadership opportunities.

Flowers and her family moved to Fountain Hills last year and although she has a bachelor’s in English, she’s never taught before. She is currently participating in Grand Canyon University’s L.E.A.P. to Teach Program, which was approved unanimously in August 2020 by the Arizona State Board of Education as a way to combat a state-wide teacher shortage.

Educated Arizona professionals have been able to get emergency subject matter certificates to teach in Arizona schools due to the pandemic and teacher shortage. GCU’s Local Education Agency Pathway (LEAP) program turns those professionals into certified teachers who are able to better explain and guide students. L.E.A.P. to Teach is an affordable path to a teaching certificate and can be completed in 10 months, according to the program’s website.

Flowers is passionate about children, veterans and education, and she’s found a way to combine all three. She’s excited to make a mark in Fountain Hills this year as a teacher and leader.

“It seemed like it made sense to bring in, along with what we do with PBIS [Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports],” Flowers said. “It really goes hand in hand with that initiative to increase positive behaviors amongst the students. It feels like my own way of elevating what’s already being done in the schools, to just help the students be good citizens and good to one another.”