Robin Pakka
Flowing Wells School District proudly recognizes Robin Pakka as an outstanding teacher who makes a difference in her students’ lives every day. Ms. Pakka graduated from The University of Arizona with bachelor’s degrees in history and secondary social studies education, and minors in French and geography. She then earned her master’s degree in educational leadership from Northern Arizona University. Ms. Pakka has served as a social studies teacher at Flowing Wells High School since 1991, teaching AP Government, AP European History, U.S. Government, Honors World History, World History, and U.S. History.
Robin clearly is passionate about her content area of social studies, but ultimately, she sees social studies as a venue to help her students develop invaluable life skills. Robin states, “As much as I love my social studies content, I believe that my most important role is teaching students how to create their own success—at school and in life.” A walk through Ms. Pakka’s classroom will provide a glimpse of students struggling to analyze challenging primary source documents, collaborating in groups to compare historical precedents with current events, and creating vocabulary flip charts to master seemingly endless lists of new words. Meanwhile, Ms. Pakka is everywhere at once, providing support and encouraging intellectual risk taking, challenging her students to achieve beyond what they had believed possible. “I want kids to succeed; I want them to care about learning and doing. I want them to hate failure so much that they will work harder than ever before to prove to themselves that they can accomplish amazing things.”
Robin Pakka’s commitment to the profession transcends the walls of her classroom. Her recognition that education is a community endeavor has inspired her to take on leadership roles and to find opportunities to engage her students in unique learning experiences. Ms. Pakka has served as an Instructional Coach, in which she provided direct support to colleagues to help them grow professionally. She also has mentored first- and second-year teachers, has served as department chairperson, and has served as a cooperating teacher for fifteen student teachers. Recently Ms. Pakka accepted possibly the scariest leadership role of her career—faculty chairperson for the Ambassadors Club. In this role, she coordinated a trip to Europe with twenty-six high school students! Planning already has begun for the next Ambassadors trip…
Robin Pakka’s absolute dedication to her students and to the community is immediately evident and motivates her to be the legendary teacher she is. The Flowing Wells School District is proud to recognize Robin Pakka as our outstanding high school faculty member of the year.
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