By Tiffany Sweeney
In October, the Montana Office of Public Instruction announced the 2025 Teacher of the Year. The lucky recipient was Dawn Sievers, a teacher from Power School District; however, Sievers brings more than luck to the table. She earned this accomplishment with over thirty years of teaching experience in Spanish, English, and Art, and today she is using it as an opportunity to advocate.
Being selected as Teacher of the Year is a multi-tiered process. First, a teacher is nominated for the position. Then, she/he submits an extensive application. A committee then convenes to review the information and narrows the selection to the top four candidates. All candidates are then interviewed in person to ultimately select the final recipient.
As the 2025 recipient, Sievers is working to elevate the teaching profession by sharing her own impact story. She came from an underprivileged background with a high level of trauma. Her mother, making a courageous move to leave an unsafe situation, fled to Idaho and Sievers found herself under the instruction of Mrs. Luddin. As she entered the fourth grade, she was unable to read and outwardly expressed she knew she was stupid. Mrs. Luddin replied, “You are not unintelligent. You are unschooled.” The teacher then took Sievers under her wing, providing extra lessons at recess and throughout the summer. This one relationship would come to change the entire trajectory of Sievers’s life, impacting generations. Not only would Sievers pursue her own career in education,impacting hundreds of kids over the years, but her own kids would also pursue careers in medicine continuing to pay it forward.
In addition to advocating for the profession, Sievers hopes to further the conversation about bringing more equitable pay to teachers, to debunk misconceptions about our youth, and to build community. With all her years within the field, she also wants to leave her fellow educators with some words of wisdom: “Whether you may know it or not, you have touched countless lives. You are the people running into the fire while others are running out. You are GREATLY appreciated and you ARE making a difference!”