Vermont Teacher Of The Year for 2025 finds focus through time, truth and history

Teaching is a calling and integrates on a wavelength of communication. Only by understanding and interrelating to students and their perspective can one teach the right lessons, values and questions. Caitlin MacLeod-Bluver, a History and English teacher at Winooski High School right outside of Burlington, was recently announced as the Vermont Teacher Of The Year for 2025. MacLeod-Bluver sat down in between classes to talk about her motivation, her passion and her laser focus in helping her students achieve and find their voice.

With the teaching curriculum, perspective and perception can play a very important part, especially when looking at the path for students but also in being reflective on the possible takeaways. This is also reflective in the journey MacLeod-Bluver found to eventually lead her to her classroom which is filled with art, inspiration and literature but also a sense of the real.

MacLeod-Bluver explains that she taught at Boston public schools for eight years, working mostly with students of color, primarily immigrant and refugee students. When she and her family relocated to Vermont, Winooski was the district she wanted to work in. She had been coming up to Vermont for many years for skiing and also had an aunt in Jericho.

When she started out in Boston, most of the education programs she was designing were focused on how to support the needs of all students. The questions were: "How can you be culturally responsive and relevant to their needs? How can you have linguistically sustaining practices and really affirm and honor students full identities in the classroom?" MacLeod-Bluver felt early on that it was really, from her point-of-view, about examining one's own biases and then beyond that, bringing that knowledge and reflection into the classroom and using it to find a way to honor and uplift the students.

She says some of those first instances of realization was when she moved to Juneau for a short time after growing up in Western Mass. "[Up there] I was a seventh grade Special Ed teacher, and I was working largely with Tlingit Native Alaskan students. Alaska was just a short stint....mostly for hiking and skiing. I knew eventually my husband and I would settle in Vermont. And I really wanted to work in a diverse district like Winooski or Burlington so I was happy to find this job here. "

When she began teaching at Winooski High School, it really affirmed a lot of the work that she was striving towards. "And one thing that's unique about Winooski, unlike Boston, is that it truly is diverse. There are many students who are white, whose families have been here for generations and generations [and they're] sitting next to newcomer refugee students. In Boston, you don't necessarily get that. You will have a classroom full of refugees or a classroom full of students of color. So this is really is the most diverse setting I've ever worked in."

This approach though needs to reflect in the curriculum she teaches, the questions she is asking and the assignments that she is creating. She says that all those choices add richness to the discussion. "I think of classrooms as spaces where kids can offer their perspectives, hopefully...to be listened to and valued, but also to have evidence to support what they believe."

One of the classes MacLeod-Bluver teaches at Winooski High is called "Global Explorations." "It's a class that I designed to help students learn about the countries where many of our students are from. It focuses on the Congo, Somalia and Bhutan, and a lot of the feedback that I've gotten from students who are both white and students who are from Congo or Somalia and from Bhutan is that they've never learned these histories before."

She explains that many of the born and bred Winooski students, know there are refugee students at the school but they don't know the history of what's going on in those student's native countries. "Even Congolese students do not necessarily know the full history of what their country is." She says it's been a really fun and interesting to bring those discussion and their histories into an academic setting.

But MacLeod-Bluver herself has to do deep dives into this material to understand the text. "I've learned ...and it's my third time teaching this specific class....I've learned so much in three years. I say I'm no expert on any of this...but I've taught myself a lot and I've learned a lot." She says she does rely on a lot of experts coming into her classroom to connect the dots. "So, at Winooski, we have multi-lingual liaisons, and they're really the point of contact for many of our multi-lingual families." These liaisons will come into her class and do presentations or do interviews with students. She also tries to get her students' families to come in talk. She says that can often be a barrier but she tries to bring those voices in as much as possible.

MacLeod-Bulver says she tries to be incredibly responsive to her students' interests. "And now having taught this class a few times, I can kind of predict where their questions will be." An example she gives is when she teaches Congolese history within that curriculum. "So we study Mobutu, who was the dictator in Congo from 1961 to 1997...and if you Google Mobuto,[that is how he pops up]" But she says many of the Congolese students, their families and even their liaisons have immense respect for Mobutu. "So it was like a really learning point for me, of like, 'What biases am I bringing into this? And how do we examine sources? What does that mean? And what is truth in how our different perspectives play into this?'"

MacLeod-Bluver says so much of what she tries to do (which she has been reflecting on a lot post-election as she did in 2016) is "'How do we teach kids to critically analyze sources and what they mean?' I want students to feel like their voice is valued no matter what, but you had better back it up with evidence." The question, she poses, is where is that evidence coming from? "And how do you know that it's a source you can trust, and does it makes a strong argument."

MacLeod-Bluver says having those types of discussions is important, "whether you call it media literacy or just the work of what's true. That's what historians do. We weren't there when [these] things happened but historians [have to be] our investigators." As a result, she says that important to look at primary sources and make an argument. "'Are they corroborating each other? Can you trust this?" MacLeod-Bluver says that is the work that good history teachers are doing, despite that many times it often is just applied to politics.

Understanding how literature and history interact has been an important benchmark of culture for as long as time has been recorded. MacLeod-Bluver says she has worn many different hats. "I started as a history teacher for a couple years in Boston. I switched schools and I became an English and ESL teacher. I have many different licenses...an English and History license and I have a special ed and ESL license as well." But ultimately it all comes back to a love of teaching. "I love helping kids find their voice. I love helping kids develop their identity as people. You do that in English classrooms. You do that in History classrooms." She says, within this structure, it can take the forms of verbal discussion or critical writing...one informs the other and vice-versa. "It is about developing [the students] as strong writers. And then a lot of my classes end with speeches or slam poetry. 'What do [the words] mean? How do you communicate your voice and what does that looks like?'"

One book MacLeod-Bluver recently taught was "The Poet X" by Elizabeth Acevedo, which is a coming of age story about a Dominican girl in New York City finding her voice. The track of the book is how this character deals with societal gender expectations around her, and how she ultimately uses poetry to find her voice. The story uses her relationship with her parents, her brother and a love interest. The writing style Acevedo uses is free verse. "So it's very accessible for the students. The main character is a poet." MacLeod-Bulver says Acevedo wrote the book because there were no books that when she herself was teaching that featured Dominican girls. "So we don't have any Dominican students at Winooski but the students relate to it so well." She feels like the book shows the power of what she and others as teachers can do "when we show students books and use books that they can relate to." She adds that these books "are a gateway into understanding our world better, and then by extension our own country in a way."

As a progression of this lesson, MacLeod-Bluver has her students then write a literary analysis essay while also doing two original poetry pieces of their own. "So they're writing their own poems and finding their own voice about their experiences." She then has them use that assignment as a jumping off point for a national competition called "Poetry Out Loud" "So we'll do a school wide competition where they choose a specific poem. They recite the poem out loud and the winner from our school wide competition goes to State."

While that works in the context of literature, where does the balance of historical context lie because history tends to repeat itself? How does one teach younger minds to recognize this and be critical thinkers and come to their own conclusions?

"You said 'History repeats itself,'" continues MacLeod-Bluver. "I teach another class called 'Challenging Systems of Oppression,' which is about Reconstruction through Black Lives Matter. It really focuses on the Black American experience." She says one theme she tries try to emphasize a lot in that class is that "whenever there's been injustice, there's been ordinary people fighting for justice and fighting against injustice. And the fight for justice, and the path to justice, is long and hard, and there will be many setbacks." She says it can be often be an individual journey. "But we keep fighting, and it's definitely been something that I talk a lot about with the kids."

She says it is "about teaching kids the truth about our hard history, but finding figures from history that they can aspire to, whether it's through books or through authors they can relate to," She says one of the reasons she loves being a teacher "is that it's so intellectual. The books that I choose to teach, the content that I choose to teach or not teach...it all speaks to our values. So I spend a lot of time figuring out what it is I am teaching, and it has such an impact on kids."

But it is also about making an individual impact. She speaks of one of her students who is Congolese. "She had never learned the history of the Congo before," explains MacLeod-Bluver. "She had never read Patrice Lumumba's speech when the Congo gained independence in 1960. We read that speech this year, and she said to me at the end of the lesson, 'Miss Caitlin, that was amazing. I'm so inspired. I'm going back to Congo to become president of Congo.' Who knows? But things like that [...for me just speak to that power.]"

Those kind of subconscious aspirations begin to inform the conscious as these students could be our next leaders. This is why it is important for MacLeod-Bluver to keep her path as well. What she says keeps her focused is the kids.

"Honestly, it's the kids, and I feel like it is hard work, and I show up day-in and day-out for them...but I don't have a choice to not do this." She speaks to the fact that she is leading a new hiking and outdoor club. They started a poetry club, a social justice club and a literary magazine. "It feels like sometimes I'm drowning. It does feel like that sometimes but the kids give me joy and give me energy. And I feel like it's so important. They deserve opportunities like this...and I want to give them these opportunities."

But of course there was a spark point for her. She said she did have many teachers who were transformative for her in highlight. But she specifically remembers when she was an undergrad at Wesleyan in Middletown, Connecticut, she was given the opportunity to teach at a summer program through the Breakthrough Collaborative in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "I worked with a close friend and mentor who had done this program called Boston Teacher residency. That is how I got into teaching in Boston. And it was transformative."

She continues: "With teaching, you have so much power. It's so creative and so intellectual to take these big issues of race and gender and systemic racism and climate change...How are you going to distill that into youth plans and lesson plans and the language you use with kids?" She says that the joy in teaching "is that you do that every day. I'm not perfect. I make mistakes, but I am reflective on my practice and the language I use with kids, and I think constantly, 'How can I do this better?'"

But that comes with planning and intention especially with a path over a semester. MacLeod-Bluver quotes Dr. Gholdy Muhammad who is an educator and author. "She says, 'You really design curriculum when you start with the kids. 'What are they interested in? What are their experiences?'" MacLeod-Bluver says Muhammad uses a specific metaphor: "If you were designing a dress, don't you take the measurements of your client first? You [first] see what's going to fit."

"So really it is 'What do my students in front of me need? What should they be learning? What does their trajectory in high school look like? Where are the gaps and how can I build that?'" As a result, MacLeod-Bluver says she designs the curriculum for them with the intentionality of "'What do I think they'll be interested in?' And then frequently I will pause and redirect."

MacLeod-Bluver then speaks of a book she will be teaching again in January which is called "All My Rage" by Sabaa Tahir, a Pakistani author who won the National Book Award. The story follows two Pakistani immigrant students growing up in California. "And it just deals with a lot of themes that again, are relatable for kids: family trauma, and questions around the American Dream and what that looks like."

In terms of how the Teacher Of The Year accolade actually happened, MacLeod-Bluver says each district in the state of Vermont can nominate a teacher for the Outstanding Educator Award. She received that honor last year from her peers at the school. "And then after you get that, you're invited to apply for Teacher of the Year. And that was an application process with recommendation letters, essay questions, interviews and then a speech to the State Board of Education."

MacLeod says her speech to the state board was really about this idea of the American dream and what it means. It is about creating ways and spaces through curriculum, and through programming, to bring students to connection.

One of those experiential aspects is that MacLeod-Bluver hosts "what I call a community Iftar every year. Iftar is the meal Muslims eat during Ramadan to break their fast." MacLeod-Bluver explains that the school she taught at in Boston started this practice. "And when I came here, we have so many Muslim students, I was like ['We should do this here!']" She partnered with a lot of the multilingual liaisons as well as the students and families to make it happen. They've done it now four years in a row and had more than 400 guests attend last spring. "But this is what we do as teachers. We show up for kids. When we host events like this, we're affirming their identities. And it's not just for the Muslim students, it's for all our students."

Teaching is experiential. If a teacher can connect to students on that sort of level, a cultural level, it makes learning easier. "They know that you care about them, about their whole selves, and everything they're bringing to the table. You find ways to honor that, to elevate that, to give them opportunities to develop their voice about things they care about." MacLeod-Bluver adds, if you put that energy and passion into it, "they will show up, and they will work really hard. Our kids are geniuses. They're storytellers. They have creative solutions to some of our most complex problems. They are poets. And I, as a facilitator of learning, [just think] 'How can I bring this out?' I think the kids see me as someone that truly does care about them and their families and their whole experiences. And then that translates to really high levels of academic success in the classroom."

But teaching has to evolve...yet it will always be based in the human experience. "I care deeply about helping students develop as critical thinkers." She say that artificial intelligence is not going to replace teachers helping students find their voice. But AI can be a tool to help them in their learning "but not as the 'learning' itself. With education, we always need to be responsive to the needs of our kids." She says that has not changed since she started teaching in 2011. The questions are still the same: "How am I creating a space where all kids feel safe and comfortable in my class? How am I creating a space to hear diverse perspectives? How am I creating opportunities for students to have engaging text-rich discussions in class using different texts? The texts I'm using might change over time. Themes might change over time. But those core elements of like 'Oh, this is what we know is good' and that we want kids having these types of experiences in high school'...that has not changed."

MacLeod-Bluver does say that even though she is receiving this recognition, teaching is not a solo activity. Whether it is her colleagues, the custodial staff "that makes my room beautiful each night, the lunch and cafeteria workers that are feeding the kids or our nurses, and everyone [that helps with] the mental health needs of our students...they are all doing so much. I'm proud of the work that I do, but I couldn't do any of it without all of these amazing people."