Erie high School has an abundance of amazing teachers, but one that stands out from the rest is Kim Kepler, who teaches a variety of math classes ranging from Honors Algebra 2 to Honors Precalculus with Trigonometry.
Kepler is in her 21st year of teaching, and her love for Erie is strong as she has never worked at another school. She lives locally in the town with her family, she has a son who’s in middle school, and her daughter is a junior at EHS. Kepler expresses she was scared to work at the high school in the town she lives in, because she didn’t know how interactions with students would be outside of school. In reality, she learned “I love going to shops and seeing my students and I just love catching up outside of school, because that’s where real things happen,” she says with a smile on her face.
Inside the classroom, Kepler is known to be supportive and overall kind to all of her students. Whether it’s to chat or to ask questions, she will be there for whatever you need. Kendra Twitto is a Junior at Erie and currently enrolled in Kepler’s Honors Precalculus with Trigonometry course, and she emphasizes “[Kepler] is an amazing teacher, honestly one of my favorites. She is really considerate and she helps me with whatever I need in math. It’s really easy to ask her questions and she’s just overall a great person.”
Kepler strives to relate to students that may not understand or enjoy math, because she once was that student that needed tutors and extra help. Math never came easy to her, so she tries to teach with methods that are easily understandable and easy to follow along. “I try to bring to the table a way to explain things in a different way, because sometimes when you understand something really well, it’s hard to explain why exactly you understand it.”
Along with building fundamental relationships inside the classroom, Kepler can often be seen at other school events, like choir concerts, as well as participating in staff activities like joint teacher Halloween costumes. Her daughter, Kiley Kepler, adds, “it’s a lot of fun to see her at the pep assemblies, and she does the teacher dance that they do every year, and it’s just a really good time to cheer her on at all of her events.”
Every mother-daughter relationship is different, but Kim and Kiley manage to maintain a very strong relationship, despite the fact that they go to work and school at the same place. Kiley explains, “mostly we just stay to ourselves because she’s still my mom at my highschool, but respecting our boundaries has been a very big thing for us but it’s really nice to have her here.” Kim adds, “I’m sure it’s easier for me than her, but [Kiley] is so gracious about it,” she continues, “I initially thought we would be like two passing ships in the night, but we aren’t, [Kiley] is so nice about everything, it’s truly great.”
Kepler emphasizes teaching math can get difficult because many students ask the question “when will I ever use this again?” But she takes this question and turns it into a lesson, explaining “you will probably never use the Law of Cosines outside of these walls, but what I’m hoping students take from this class is perseverance. Being able to question your answers, failing, and trying again, since it’s not necessarily about what you are learning but the process it takes.”
Kepler has built relationships with students for over two decades, not only teaching them about graphing functions and solving for ‘x’, but helping them along the way and preparing them for the real world after high school. Erie High School is honored to have teachers like Kepler helping their students thrive inside and out of the classroom.
