ABOVE: Chris Engelby is the Teacher of the Year for the Fairmont Area School District. A big fan of the Iowa Hawkeyes, Engelby teacher Physical Education and Health.

FAIRMONT–Over Chris Engelby’s 36 years with the Fairmont Area School District, she’s had the opportunity to not only teach, but leave a positive impact on more than a thousand students. The effect she’s had has earned her the title of 2025 Teacher of the Year.

Originally from Norway, Iowa, Engelby graduated in a class of just 29 students.

“I always introduce myself and tell my students, everyone that’s in this health class, that was the size of my high school graduation class,” she said.

Following graduation, she went to Luther College in Decorah, Iowa where she majored in Physical Education (PE).

Engelby shared that she always loved sports and enjoyed working with young people.

“I had a counselor in college who said if you like sports and kids, maybe you should teach PE. I was encouraged to have a minor in something so I thought health would be a good combination. I love to teach both,” Engelby said.

Degree in hand, she began applying for different jobs across the midwest.

“Back then, it was hard to get a teaching job because there were a lot of people trying to find a teaching job, compared to today,” she said.

Luckily, she ended up accepting a job with the Fairmont Area School District in 1990. It was her first job and has been her only job since. The reason she has stayed so long is really two-fold.

“My goal was to go back to Luther (College) and teach and coach, but then I met my husband and that’s what kept me here,” she said.

Her husband, Paul, who is originally from Fairmont, was in his first year of teaching at St. Paul Lutheran School at the time of their meeting. The couple later married and had a set of twin daughters, Emily and Ashley.

“I’ve loved staying here and have thoroughly enjoyed working for the school district and I’ve loved working with the kids,” Engelby said.

In addition to teaching, earlier in her career Engelby was the head girl’s basketball coach for five years and the head girl’s softball coach for six years. She coached junior high softball for another eight years.

Currently she teaches 9th grade lifetime fitness, which is a PE class, and 10th grade health and is now on her second generation of kids and said she’s coming up on teaching a third generation, too, which she has mixed feelings on.

“The thing that’s going to get me is, one student is going to say their grandpa or grandma had me (as a teacher). It was a shock to my system in 2004 when my girls were born when a fifth grader told me their mom had me as a teacher. I was devastated,” she said with a laugh.

In all seriousness, Engelby has enjoyed seeing former students of hers return to the area and start their own lives. She enjoys even more being able to catch up with them and hear what they’ve gone on to do.

A good number of her former students actually ended up as colleagues. Engelby shared that 40 of her former students currently work for the Fairmont Area School District. Twenty of them are teachers and 11 of them teach with her at the high school.

As for changes she’s seen in teaching over the years, Engelby has certainly noticed a shift in her subject material.

“I used to cover mental health for maybe three days and now I probably spend about 13 days covering it because it is such a major thing that we need to talk about,” Engelby said.

She has always taught a drug unit as part of her curriculum but whereas the focus used to be on things like cigarettes, she said it’s now evolved to include vaping and fentanyl.

“Things kind of change as the years go on and you need to stay on top of the latest topics. Some topics don’t change in health, but some do,” she said.

Distracted driving is also a new area that’s been covered with the emergence of cell phones. Engelby’s class also has partnered with the Martin County Sheriff’s Office and now works with Empower and uses pedal carts and goggles to simulate what it would be like driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

Engelby also brings in a variety of guest speakers and tries to expose her students to as much as she can. For a unit on death and dying, she brings in a funeral home director to speak to the class and then the class later visits the funeral home to see parts of it they wouldn’t otherwise normally see.

“It gives them a more positive experience because they’re not grieving over someone,” she explained.

Engelby was actually nominated for Teacher of the Year in the past and declined it. She initially declined this time around but changed her mind once she found out that a former student nominated her.

She was able to read what the nominator, Zoey Roggow, a paraprofessional in the district, wrote.

The nomination, in part, said, “I believe Chris is worthy of this title for all she has done for our school and students for many, many years. As someone who has sat in the chairs as a student in her class she has always made me feel like I mattered. Even then I could tell she was compassionate, not only about what she taught but also her students.”

“That is exactly why I teach, because I try to build those relationships with my students,” Engelby said.

Over the years she has saved all of the letters and cards that she gets from students and said that when she needs a pick-me-up, she’ll go and read through some of them.

“Then I’ll say, ‘yup, I am making a difference with these kids,'” Engelby said.