A five-minute assembly at the Wellsville-Middletown High School gymnasium turned out to be a memorable one for Denise Rakers on April 2.

Rakers was named the recipient of the Wellsville-Middletown Teacher of the Year award for the 2024-25 school year. She received a certificate and flowers from W-M Junior High English teacher Niki Freie, who is the president of the CTA (Community Teachers Association).

Rakers was honored in front of high school, junior high and elementary students at the assembly. After the awards presentation, she took a picture with the students and her award at the bleachers.

“I feel like they’re all my kids,” Rakers said. “It doesn’t matter who or what they are or what background they come from. They know they could always come to my room for either a snack or a ‘how you’re doing’ or ‘how’s your day going’ type of thing. They don’t have to have me in class to know where I’m at. I think it was really important to have a picture with my school family.”

Rakers stood next to the gymnasium door when she heard her name being announced. She said she was thrilled to be named teacher of the award in a very short and unexpected assembly.

“We don’t have very many assemblies here unless they’re really important,” Rakers said. “We do really important assemblies because we believe instruction is important for our kiddos, so I’m very honored to receive the award that the staff and students voted on.”

W-M hasn’t given out a teacher of the year award in several years. Freie said Rakers was chosen for the honor because of her strong dedication to the students at W-M R-I.

“Wellsville-Middletown will be a very different place without this teacher,” Freie said.

Rakers is an online studies teacher at W-M. She instructs English, math and pre-algebra. She is also an advisor for the Student Council and Future Teachers of America.

Rakers works for a school district that has just 28 students in its high school graduating class. She said her mission is helping students in all backgrounds excel in the classroom and in life.

“I see a lot of different kiddos whether they’re excelling and doing dual credit in the high school level or those kiddos who are struggling and maybe have a home life that is not the most picturesque home life,” Rakers said. “We try to help them provide them with some services whether it’s some food from the Buddy Pack program or teaching them how to cook with some of the things that they received in their Buddy Packs.”

A 1997 Montgomery County graduate, Rakers started teaching at W-M in 2019.

“I was actually teaching at a private school for five years and I needed to decide if I was going to go back into public school education or private school education,” Rakers said. “Jessie Cobb (who was then the W-M principal) was in need of a special education teacher and that is also one of the degrees that I possess.”

Rakers taught special education in her first year at W-M. She worked with Larry Madsen, who passed away the following year.

“Larry and I worked at the Division Youth Services in Montgomery City for quite a few years together,” Rakers said. “He actually did the play in Montgomery City. The youth center was actually a facility where kids were charged with adult crimes, but they were juveniles. So they would be in our facility until they were 21. I actually knew Larry before I got to school here. We worked in that facility together from an educational standpoint. So when I came here, Larry was like, ‘Oh, we can work again together.’”

Rakers said the teacher of the year award will motivate her to keep helping her students succeed in the classroom.

“I don’t feel like teaching is a job for me,” she said. “It’s kind of a way of life. It’s my career. It’s something I love to do. I love to come to work everyday and work with kids. It will keep pushing me to do my very best all of the time for them.”