In the coming school year, Hannah Haworth will be joining the English department at Northwest, as well as adopting the position of head coach for The Pack dance team. Haworth is currently receiving her English education degree at Missouri State University, and student teaches at Strafford High School near Springfield. She said she decided to become an English teacher due to her past experiences with reading, writing and teaching dance.

“I knew I loved reading and writing,” Haworth said. “But then, through my career with dance, I learned that I also love to teach, so I meshed the two things I enjoyed and that’s why I decided to be an English teacher.”

Haworth said she was drawn to Northwest for a variety of reasons, including recommendations from friends and the welcoming staff.

“After I had gone through a few interviews and realized I wasn’t drawn to those schools, I started looking at Blue Valley and [my friends] kind of just sold it to me,” Haworth said. “I was like ‘well, this feels like where I am going to be’ and that is how it happened.”

Assistant Principal and Activities Director Kelsey Bakalar said Haworth stood out during the hiring process because of her experience and strong endorsements from her teachers.

“She has incredible credentials,” Bakalar said. “She’s young, but has a lot of dance experience and both her university supervisors and her student teaching supervisors said she was one in a million and we saw that shine through in her interview.”

In addition to recommendations and experience, Bakalar said she was impressed with Haworth’s willingness to learn.

“She blew us out of the water with her professionalism, her maturity and her experiences,” Bakalar said. “She is clearly a teacher who has taken initiative to learn and grow beyond what was offered to her in a classroom at college.”

Bakalar said it is beneficial that Haworth will be entering the English department at Northwest because of its credibility.

“She’s in a department that has a lot of experience and is extremely credible,” Bakalar said. “So I think it’s going to be great to bring her into that because I think they’ll be great support for her.”

The support from the English department will help Haworth achieve her goals as a teacher, and she said she hopes to revive students’ passion for education.

“I’m hoping that I can, as an English teacher, try to help students fall in love with learning because I feel like we’ve kind of fallen away from that in recent years,” Haworth said. “That is how I knew I wanted to be a teacher, and why I fell in love with English, is because I just love learning, I am a lifelong learner.”

Along with her position in the English department, Bakalar said having Haworth as the head dance coach will allow students to develop an even stronger bond with her.

“Anytime you have someone who is in a coaching position, that creates a different type of bond,” Bakalar said. “Teachers in general form great relationships with kids, but whenever you spend that much extra time with them, that becomes something really special.”

Haworth said she has been dancing almost her entire life. Recently, she has traveled to teach high school and college dance teams around the country as well as being the treasurer of the club dance team at Missouri State University for two years. 

As the new dance coach at Northwest, Haworth said she strives to bring the dance team to its fullest potential.

“I would love to get the team back to the potential I know they can get to and, hopefully, get our name back out there,” Haworth said.

In addition to bringing new motivation to The Pack, Bakalar said Haworth will also introduce new concepts to the classroom.

“We always look to our new teachers to come in with fresh ideas and to kind of mix things up a little bit, and I think she will be able to do that as well,” Bakalar said. “I think she will become an important part of our Husky community.”