Heron teacher Lisa MacMillan: ‘I love the relationships I get to build’

--- Published on October 22nd 2015 ---
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Little did Lisa MacMillan know years ago that she would inspire one of her students at the time, Shantel Sandoval, to become a Natomas teacher herself.

The two are colleagues now, working only a few miles apart: MacMillan is a 1st grade teacher at Heron School and Sandoval is a first-year teacher at Natomas Gateways Middle School.

“When you see a teacher with passion, that passion tends to follow you,” said Sandoval, who attended MacMillan’s 8th grade class at then-Leroy Greene Middle School and now teaches 8th grade English herself.

MacMillan, Natomas Unified’s District Teacher of the Year, has been inspiring students, building relationships, and making a difference for two decades in Natomas.

“I love the relationships that I get to build, not just with my students but with their families,” MacMillan said. “That’s something that’s just been huge in my experience in this profession. And I feel so honored to be part of their lives.”

MacMillan and her family – husband Scott is an NUSD teacher too – have lived in Natomas for many years. She estimates that she has taught more than 2,300 local children in stints at Heron, Inderkum High and at Leroy Greene, a middle school at the time.

“It makes it feel like a small town when you can go to the market and run into students or their families,” MacMillan said. “It’s a really neat experience.”

MacMillan’s Twitter handle says a whole lot about her passion for reading: @BookLadyMac.

When asked the name of her favorite book, she couldn’t pick just one, so she offered a list of her favorite authors: Kate Chopin, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Ursula Le Guin, Tim O’Brien, T.C. Boyle, Alice Walker, Bill Bryson, Eudora Welty – plus a host of “picture book illustrators and writers I love.”

Her love for the written word led her to teaching, where she began her career as a middle and high school English teacher. “I loved reading, I loved the classics, I loved all sorts of literature, so it was my freshman year of college, pretty early on, when I decided to be a teacher,” said MacMillan, who switched to 1st grade at Heron six years ago.

At Heron, Mrs. MacMillan offers support to colleagues in effectively implementing technology in their classrooms. She also has been involved in a teacher mentoring program, and she serves as a master teacher for student teachers from California State University, Sacramento.

In nominating MacMillan for Teacher of the Year, Prikncipal Amy Whitten characterized her as a collaborative, well-respected, team player whose classroom is “always a place where students are highly engaged in their learning and eager to explain what they’re doing and what they’ve learned.”

Committed to giving back to her community, MacMillan has volunteered one summer at a “4th R” youth learning program, teaching reading lessons.  More recently, she has done home visits over the summer to tutor some of her previous students who could use a little extra support before entering second grade.

Asked what profession she’d choose if she were not a teacher, MacMillan said law, then laughed. “I’d probably be the type of lawyer who wouldn’t make much money because I’d be trying to make the world a better place,” she quipped.