Union High School Teacher Named 2023 National Teacher Of The Year

A Union High School math teacher has been named the 2023 National Teacher of the Year.

Wednesday, April 19th 2023, 5:34 pm

By: Jordan Tidwell

TULSA, Okla. -

A Union Public School teacher was honored Wednesday with being named the 2023 National Teacher of the Year.

Rebecka Peterson teaches AP Calculus at Union High School. She says she once learned from teachers across the hall, then the state as the Oklahoma Teacher of the Year, and soon will learn from teachers across the country. She was named the National Teacher of the Year in New York City, but the real surprise was back in Tulsa in her former classroom at Union.

"Every time I got nervous, I just kept grounding myself and thinking about them and told myself I was going to carry them with me today, and then I got to actually carry them with me, and it was everything," Rebecka said.

Rebecka's former students surprised her from her classroom during her interview on CBS Mornings. It's a classroom Alyssa Fisher once sat in as a student, but now calls her own as a teacher, following in the footsteps of her former teacher turned role model. She says she learned from Rebecka that teaching is about so much more than math.

"I don't care that in ten years a student can graph an exponential function, I care that they can learn from their mistakes, and they know just the value of hard work," Fisher said.

Rebecka is known for her passion and love for her students and for helping them not be so afraid of math. Kayden Kehe is now a senior and plans to go to the University of Tulsa next year, now wanting to be a professor himself because of Rebecka.

"The compassion and love that she shows to all the people around her, including her students, and I want to embody that, I want to teach just like she does, I want to interact with people just like she does," he said.

Rebecka will now spend the next year traveling across the country speaking to educators. She says it's the honor of a lifetime to represent both Union and Oklahoma.

"There's nothing like this profession, where people just continue to think about us, carry us with them throughout their lives, and it is so humbling," she said.

Rebecka is the third National Teacher of the Year from Oklahoma with the last teacher being from Sand Springs in 1964.