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A teacher’s classroom can look and be located in many different places. For Long Cane Middle School’s Teacher of the year, Coach Shabre Lovelace, her classroom is the gym.

“I always had a passion for like the youth,” Lovelace said. “My undergrad was in sports management. I wanted to be involved in sports and become an athletic director. I realized one way to get into school is to become a teacher.”

Lovelace attended LaGrange College, where she took part in the Social Studies Education Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program.

“I was in a classroom for three years, and I just fell in love with it,” Lovelace said. “Working with my old classmates’ kids and my own family motivated me even more to dive into education.”

Lovelace said she started with social studies because she liked teaching it and making it fun for students. However, with teaching physical education, Lovelace said she likes being able to interact with more of her students than she would in a traditional classroom.

“I get to see students in a different light in their element doing different things,” Lovelace said.

In her five years of teaching, Lovelace said the most fulfilling part of her job is seeing them grow into the people they become.

“My first group of kids are now juniors are Troup,” Lovelace said. “Watching them grow into who they are … is rewarding.”

Lovelace said being able to work in a school she attended as a kid, as well as working with the kids there now has made a big impact on her as a teacher.

“The type of kids we have here keep me grounded and help me better relate and empathize with them,” Lovelace said. “I have passion for the students here because I see myself in these halls. I walked up and down these halls and gave my teachers some of the headaches they give me. It helps me look past some of their attitudes and behavior because that used to be me, but look at me now.”

Lovelace said she tells her students all time she will never give up on them because the teachers she had during her time at LCMS never did.

When Lovelace isn’t teaching, she can be found at home relaxing, attending sporting events, spending time with her Delta Sigma Theta sorority sisters, or working with West Point’s recreation office.

If Lovelace wasn’t a teacher, she said would still want to work with the youth and be a director of a parks and recreation department.