AP U.S. History teacher Casey Piola has been named the HHS Teacher of the Year for 2025, an honor that recognizes her commitment to innovative teaching styles and her positive classroom environment.

Piola, in her 12th year of teaching, expressed gratitude for the recognition from her peers.

“It feels like external validation and reassurance,” Piola said. “I am honored that my colleagues see me at that standard. It’s also a challenge for me to make sure I stay at that level.”

Piola’s educational philosophy extends beyond the traditional grading system. For her, the ultimate goal is student growth, not perfection.

“I wish we didn’t even have to deal with grades,” she said. “I wish we could all sit in a circle and talk about history. That would be my dream- that we could find a way to learn about history because we want to and because it’s important.”

She summarized her thought on grades, saying, “Grades should be a sum of how you’ve grown, not a sum of all your failures.”

To fix this, Piola focuses her teaching on growth and progress in her and her students.

“I try to tell my students, your goal is not perfection, your goal is progress,” Piola said. “As long as you’re making progress, you’re doing exactly what you need to do. Am I demanding progress from you? Yes. But am I demanding perfection from you? No. And am I gonna help you make that progress? Yes.”

Piola tries to present a full view of American history, highlighting the importance of including both successes and failures in history. 

“I never want that to be said about me, that ‘Mrs. Piola never told us what happened’,” Piola said. “There’s plenty in our country to be proud of, and there’s also plenty of things in our country that are room for improvement. That’s a part of learning history: learning the good and the bad.”

Piola has spent the 25-26 school year shifting her instructional approach away from traditional lecture and toward activity-based lessons to increase student enjoyment and engagement. This helps with her goal of increasing content retention through discussion and reading.

Her classroom atmosphere, which Piola and her students describe as light, fun and full of laughter, creates an environment where students feel comfortable and motivated to learn. 

She describes her teaching style as a “warm demander.”

“It is analogous to the authoritative style of parenting, which is where you offer structure and high expectations, but you also offer lots of guidance to meet those high expectations and a lot of grace within that structure,” Piola said.

Junior Ashe Moran, a former APUSH student, appreciated that Piola has a fast teaching pace with “a level of enthusiasm and speed to where you can’t get bored.”

Moran mostly admired Piola’s passion and dedication for the subject.

“She is not there to teach you information and get the paycheck, she is there because she adores the job,” Mordan said. “She is there to make you laugh, she is there to make you smile, she is there to make sure you understand the history of the country we live in and why it’s so important to know that. She wants you to be the best citizen you can be.”

Another former APUSH student, senior Avery Hill, also praised Piola’s dedication to teaching history. 

“When you have somebody that is so dedicated to a certain subject, you can tell when they’re really invested in a subject and they really care for their students,” Hill said. “ I think Mrs. Piola was one of those people that you could tell always cared.”

Sophomore Katherine Rew noted that, while the work in APUSH is challenging, Piola “is a fun teacher and makes the material fun.” 

She also highlighted one of Piola’s unique teaching analogies.

“She likes to use what she calls the Crockpot method which is low and slow,” Rew said. “She will do anything to get you to succeed.”

In addition to curating her classroom environment, Piola cited achieving her National Board Certification as the hardest professional thing she’s ever done. She views maintaining the certification as a commitment to professional growth and sees it as a “springboard” for her to achieve other goals.

Ultimately, Piola treats her role as a teacher as preparing students for the road ahead, telling her APUSH classes that the course is “a marathon, not a sprint.”

“I try to tell my students that they can believe me when I say that they can do hard things,” she said. “Like, yes, that’s a mountain to climb, but I’m gonna show you how to be a mountain climber.”