Kristi Leff, with out-of-the-box approach, fights for the underdog

Kristi Leff has made a mark in her school, Humphrey’s Highland Elementary, as well as the state by being named 2025 Texas Elementary Teacher of the Year. Leff is a fifth-grade science and ELA teacher, and has been there since 2015. Leff has been named one of the Amarillo Globe News’ 2024 Headliners.

Leff will be honored with the other 2024 Headliner, Tim Reid, during the 2024 Amarillo Globe-News Man & Woman of the Year Celebration, presented by FirstBank Southwest, to be held at 11 a.m. Jan. 30 in the Amarillo Civic Center Heritage Room. The event will recognize the 2024 Man of the Year Clay Stribling, Woman of the Year Jodi Koumalats and the 10 2024 Citizens on the Move: Tiffaney Belflower, Stephanie Brady, Alicia DeLeon, Chase Hess, Dyron Howell, Carla Hughes, Courtney Reed, Blake Seibrecht, Suzanne Talley, and Colby Yeary.

It’s easy to see why she was chosen for the honor, with her enthusiasm and creativity that leads to a outside the box method of teaching. For one thing, Leff keeps it real. She said she decided to be a teacher when she was in sixth grade when she was in a military family that traveled around frequently.

“I was the quiet student,” she said. “I was invisible and no one paid attention to me.” Leff said she had an “old-school” teacher in California, who was very eccentric. There was a boy in the class who was the class clown, but she knew that he struggled with assignments. He had trouble learning, and the teacher put a dunce cap on him and put him in “no man’s land,” as she called it. Leff said she started scooting her chair closer to the boy every day and helping him learn. Soon he was raising his hand to answer questions and participating in the class.

“So, it helped him, but it gave me this, like, good feeling like I was doing something that helped someone.” She still felt invisible, but she knew she could make a difference in someone’s life that way. Leff wanted to get out of high school early, so she crammed classes and took extra courses before and after school, went to summer school and graduated at 16 years old. Then she started college and went a year and a half when her parents moved to Florida. Instead of starting back up in college, she got pregnant at 17. “That rebellious side came out,” she said. She had her daughter at 18 and didn’t go back to school immediately.

She had moved out of her parent’s house and had trouble getting a Pell Grant because rules had changed. When she was finally able to get the Pell Grant, she had to do her year and a half in college again because records didn’t transfer from California to Florida. “So, I tell my kids (in school), there’s going to be some hard things that you have to do in life. But you can do that. Don’t give up, keep pushing.” Leff said that all the schools she’s taught at were low socioeconomic with a high population of minority students. She said she was always a fighter for the underdog.

Learning by taking the harder road

When she got her test scores from college, her husband told her they were moving to Corpus Christi, Texas, because he worked for the National Weather Service. The problem was that she had to take the Texas test for teaching. She did and ended up with her first teaching assignment was in Mathis, Texas, a small ‘‘po-dunk town’ with a large Hispanic culture. “It was me and one other white teacher on campus,” she said. “A lot of my kids had dirt floors and no electricity.” Leff kept a refrigerator in her classroom stocked with food in case one of them needed a snack.

One of her biggest lessons in her 22 years of teaching happened there. She was reading the class roll call and called for a student named Roque, but got no answer. She called out his last name of Longoria, and he responded. When she asked him if she mispronounced his first name, he said, “No, you’re the only one who has said it right. Most people called him Rocky but he wanted to be called Roque.” At that time, Leff realized it was the small things that mattered. “It didn’t matter what prizes I brought in. They just cared that I knew them.”

The new teacher immersed herself in their culture, and it was eye-opening to her. She said one of her “aha” moments happened upon learning how they made tamales. She was invited into their homes and got to be in the tamale line. She also learned much about their folklore and beliefs. She was pregnant at the time and said she was hungry for some of their Mexican sweet bread, Pan Dulce. When she came back from lunch, there was a huge stack of it on her desk, and she told them she could never eat all that. But the kids told her that in their culture, you had to eat what the baby wanted — and all of it, or the baby would have birthmarks. She said she couldn’t eat it all, and her baby was born with seven birthmarks, including one that resembles a cow, she related with a laugh.

“To see those kiddos prosper and want to be more … that’s what tells me I’m being successful,” she said. Leff said that one of the problems in education is the Hispanic population, especially the undocumented. But not because they’re not good students.

“In Florida, you have these monolingual Spanish-speaking children that are dropped into 100% English speaking classrooms with no resources for Spanish. I’m trying to teach math and science with no book in Spanish, so I have to do white-girl translation.”

Leff said that the sad thing about education is that schools pour resources into the children and get them to the 12th grade, but they can’t go to college without a Social Security number. So, their options are limited to low-income areas of work. Her idea is to have them take Citizenship classes instead of ceramics or a foreign language, which they already know. They can graduate at 18, take their citizenship test and then go to college or trade school and be productive members of society.

“Many of them don’t know they’re undocumented, and they apply for college and get turned down. They eventually give up because nobody tells them the reason, and they think they’re not good enough,” she said.

Leff is adamant about involving her students in the whole process of learning and asks them to help her with things as well, such as applying for the honor of being the Texas Teacher of the Year. She had to write essays and the students made her read the essays out loud to them. She also does “out of the box, hands-on teaching” like bringing things from her small farm in Bushland, like eggs to incubate in her classroom, so students can learn about agriculture and life. There has even been a baby goat with its mother in her classroom.

“The only reason I’m here in the position I am is because of those kids. They have grown me, shaped me and molded me into the teacher I am. These kids come with their own experiences,” she said. “Most of them don’t leave their hometowns, so I have to teach them other things, like what a Pelican looks like and feels like.”

“I tell everybody, it’s not just me that makes me different. I have had 22 years of mentors, partner teachers, kids and administrators. I didn’t get here by myself.”

Leff previously taught at schools in Florida as well as Calallen and Mathis districts in Texas during her 22-year career. According to Amarillo ISD, she has been named Campus Teacher of the Year several times, including at Magee Intermediate in Calallen, Texas in 2009, at Springhead Elementary in Plant City, Florida, in 2014, and this year at Humphrey’s Highland. She holds an associate degree in education from Brevard Community College, in Florida, a Bachelor’s Degree in elementary education from Rollins College, in Winter Park, Florida, and a Master’s Degree in Special education from Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas. She is certified in Gifted and Talented instruction, English as a Second Language (ESL), and as an Educational Diagnostician.

This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: 2024 Headliner: Kristi Leff – teacher fights for the underdog