MORRILTON — It took Heather Zinser about one day of kindergarten at Sacred Heart Catholic School in Morrilton to decide she wanted to be a teacher.
“When I went to kindergarten, I had Mrs. Janis Horn. Everybody in Morrilton knows Mrs. Horn — she’s fabulous,” Zinser said. “Mom said when I came home, I said, ‘I’m going to be a teacher.’”
Zinser, 28, is on track to be that kind of beloved teacher, too. The fourth-grade teacher was named by the student body as elementary Educator of the Year for 2015-16, an honor she also received in 2013. Art teacher Jim Gatling received the high school honor.
Zinser said Sacred Heart “runs deep” in her family.
“I’m actually a fourth-generation [graduate],” she said, reeling off the members of her family who attended Sacred Heart Catholic School: her great-grandfather, her grandmother, her mother, two younger sisters and her husband, Brandon, who is also a fourth-generation Sacred Heart graduate. Zinser said she started dating her husband when she was in ninth grade and he was in 10th.
Her grandmother, the late Kathryn Mourot, was a biology teacher and coach at the school.
“She started the Sacred Heart basketball program,” Zinser said. Mourot later taught biology and coached basketball at St. Joseph Catholic School in Conway.
“Whenever I was little, I would go with her to ballgames and to school with her,” Zinser said. “She was for sure a huge inspiration for me to become a teacher.”
When Zinser was in elementary school, she would ask teachers at the end of the year for leftover supplies to bring home. Her bedroom was transformed into a classroom, with dry-erase boards and books everywhere.
“I played school at home — longer than I should have — until eighth grade, probably,” she said, laughing. “I’d sit my sisters down, and we’d play school.”
Zinser went to the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville to get her bachelor’s and master’s degrees on a five-year plan.
Just before she graduated with her undergraduate degree in education, Zinser said, she and her mother saw their priest when they were eating lunch in Morrilton. Zinser said he asked her plans and said, “Too bad you’re not graduating, because we’re going to have a job open.”
Zinser decided immediately to scrap her plan to get a master’s degree. She said jobs at Sacred Heart, particularly in elementary school, are hard to get because teachers stay for 15, 20 years or longer.
She went to talk to then-high school principal Brian Bailey, who also had been her principal, “so that was cool,” Zinser said. Bailey has since retired.
She was hired in 2009 to teach religion and social studies. She has a fourth-grade homeroom, and she teaches fifth- and sixth-graders.
“I’d always really wanted the little kids, so I was a little hesitant about doing the older ones, but oh, my gosh, I love having conversations with them, that they’re more independent, so it was definitely a blessing. God knew what I was supposed to do,” she said.
This past school year, she had 31 students in homeroom, the largest class she’s had, as well as 22 in fifth grade and 19 in sixth grade.
Zinser said she has “no idea” why she has been chosen twice for Educator of the Year by the students, kindergarten through 12th grade. The honor is sponsored by the Parent-Teacher Organization. Students are given a ballot with five points, “and they can divide that up among five people or give them all to one [teacher],” she said.
“I have kindergartners — I would walk down the hallway, and they’d say, ‘Oh, Mrs. Zinser, I voted all five for you.’
“It’s very humbling, because most of the teachers who are at Sacred Heart were my teachers. The first time I won it, I was so shocked — and this time I was, too. Obviously, everything I’ve learned has been from all the teachers I work with anyway,” she said.
Anna Lee Maus, 13, was a seventh-grader last year. She was a student in Zinser’s class in fourth, fifth and sixth grades. Despite not having Zinser as a teacher last year, Anna Lee said she voted for Zinser for Educator of the Year.
“She’s very nice. I really like her,” Anna Lee said. “She’s a good teacher, and she’s fun.”
The teenager recalled Colony Day in Zinser’s class, where each student picked a country.
“We got to dress up and bring food and stuff,” Anna Lee said.
Although not all teachers agree with putting an emphasis on fun, Zinser said, it’s part of her educational philosophy.
Zinser said she thinks making lessons fun helps her students learn and retain information. For example, when she teaches the state capitals, “we do it to music,” she said. “Every time I do a big lesson, I do a project on it, especially with social studies; that can be pretty boring. I try to make it as fun and hands-on as I can. I want to be a teacher that kids can come to me for anything.”
She said her students will say, “Mrs. Zinser — hallway,” when they want to talk with her privately.
“I’m going to cry,” she said. “I have really amazing kids.”
Zinser said she sends leftover school supplies home with her students, just as her teachers did for her.
“When I get extra stuff, I say, ‘Put this in your backpack, and go home and play school with it,’” she said.
She and her husband have a 2-year-old son, Mason, who will start preschool in August at Sacred Heart. “I’m so excited,” she said.
Who knows — he might want to be a teacher — but he has a couple more years to decide.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.