Nannette Millet wins high school Teacher of the Year

St. Mary Parish High School Teacher of the Year Nannette Millet is evidence that dreams do come true, if only you believe.

Millet, a Crowley native, did not attend college until she was 30 years old. She was married with kids.

“I’m definitely nontraditional,” Millet said. “I never felt like I had the brains or that I was smart enough. My parents could not afford to send five girls to college. It just wasn’t something in my family.

“My parents believed you went to work. You made good grades. They held us accountable to our grades in school. But they felt like you did not have to have a college degree. I had been working since I was 17 years old.”

She used to play school with her younger sisters and “absolutely loved it.”

“I was the boss all the time,” Millet said. “Loved to point my finger. And I think it just kind of stemmed from there. I had a passion for reading.

“I spent my summers at the library because that’s what we did when we were young.”

Millet started at LSU Eunice and transferred to McNeese State.

“I was a 34-year-old graduate with a bunch of 22-year-olds,” Millet said.

Millet’s oldest child was in eighth grade when she got her own classroom at the middle school level. She believes her role as a mother and understanding of structure set her up for success as a teacher.

“That’s where I started,” Millet said. “I didn’t want to go younger. … I love my grandchildren but I didn’t want to be in a class with young kids. I really enjoyed the middle school.

“It just comes natural be-cause I’m a mama and I was older. I understood the idea of this is how you act, classroom management.

“I think I have excellent classroom management because I was an older learned teacher.”

This is Millet’s 22nd year as a teacher. Originally from Crowley, she and husband Mark came to St. Mary Parish 12 years ago when he followed a head football coach position at Morgan City High.

Millet, too, ended up at Morgan City High. She left the world of middle school to teach English to freshmen.

“She’s absolutely wonderful,” said St. Mary Parish Acting Personnel Director Pete Boudreaux. “I actually hired her at Morgan City High.

“She came as a junior high certified teacher and became high school certified so she could teach at Morgan City High. She’s just an outstanding teacher. She’s demanding.

“Those freshmen, she gets their attention. And the fact that she can teach freshmen like she does is a gift.”

Up until this year, the Millets have been working together at the same school. Mark is now teaching and coaching at Centerville High. And she is teaching at Patterson High.

When arriving to St. Mary Parish, “there was a fresh-man position at Morgan City High,” Millet said. “And I took it and just loved it. And I’ve been at this level since. I think this is my area because they’re still impressionable.

“They still need the boundaries. And they understand that I’m their mama.”

Although Millet is successful with her classroom management style, the process of getting structured is not easy.

“It is hard,” Millet said. “And you can probably ask anybody on this campus that the first two weeks of every semester is like training.

“It is ‘this is what I expect. You’re going to say yes ma’am. You’re going to say no ma’am.’ This is what we do. And it’s a training. And it’s because I’m a mom. I think that’s where that basic day-to-day structure comes from.”

Patterson High Principal Rachael Sanders describes the Millet classroom experience as “old-school meets new-school.”

“In Mrs. Millet’s class, old school meets new school is a perfect blending of learning manners and learning the common core standards in English Language Arts,” Sanders said.

“Students will tell you that it is equally important to say “Yes, ma’am” as it is to cite strong textual evidence from grade-level text.

“Our English 2 and 3 teachers will tell you that the success they see in their own classrooms starts with Mrs. Millet whipping our freshmen into shape.”

For those who understand the culture of high school freshmen, Millet is an asset to anybody’s team.

“If you’ve ever taught freshmen, you know how it is,” Boudreaux said. “I’d hire her anywhere I’d go. No doubt. I’d hire her back in two seconds.

“Any high school principal would love to have somebody like that teaching their freshmen because they know those freshmen are getting what they need. She can handle them.

“And they know that she’s teaching what they need to know.”

Millet sets high expectations for students and acknowledges her inherent old-school nature.

“I set those boundaries for them and whether they want to admit it or not, they wanted those boundaries,” Millet said. “And my expectations are up here.

“I do not accept being called ‘Ms.’. That’s a trend of today’s society and I’m old school. And I tell them I’m old school and I’m not going to accept it. I set the expectations and they’re pretty good about figuring it out.

“And I’m not going to put up with it, other than that.”

At the end of the day, Millet states with all the boundary setting and admonishing motherly guidance, students eventually see where she is trying to lead them.

They may not get it immediately but in the end, they do.

“I think when they walk out of my room they think ‘yes, she really does care about us,’” Millet said. “‘She’s hard as can be.’ But by the end of the semester, they’ve seen where I’ve been able to take them.”

Millet wants her students to be productive members of society.

“I want you to be able to walk out of here and learn some life skills as well,” Millet said. “I want you to be a productive member of society. I want you to be somebody.”

She uses literature in class to capture their attention. She tries to make the content relevant to the lives of students.

“That’s what makes the literature come alive in my classroom,” Millet said. “It’s because I connect really well.

“I love reading, so my passion comes out and the kids see. And we stop to discuss and we connect and show it’s the real world even though it’s in a book. I make it relevant to their lives. Or try to make it relevant.”

Millet’s longtime dream of teaching is an encouragement to others and, more specifically, to students who can’t see beyond their high school years.

“In a sense, it was a dream of mine,” Millet said. “But I never thought that I would ever do it. I just never did. I would look at other people and would say ‘God, I’m not that smart.’ Never had the confidence.

“Once I had my own kids, that’s when it was like, ‘you know what, I can do this.’ So, you never give up on that goal, that dream. Don’t let age be a determining factor in what you accomplish in life.

“And that’s what I tell the kids, too. Right now, some of you can’t see past just getting out of high school. College might not be in your future but don’t rule it out. You never know.

“Look at me, I tell them all the time, I was 30. So, don’t give up on something that could possibly be one day. You have to push forward.”

Millet and her husband are parents of three children, Eric, Mac and Mollie. Mollie is a 12th-grader at Berwick High. The Millets are also grandparents of three.

Millet also received the honor of Acadia Parish Middle School Teacher of the Year in 2000.