Cori McRae knew she wanted to be a teacher from her first day of first grade in 1989.

“I walked into Miss Johnson’s room, and when I went home I told my mom and dad, ‘I want to be a teacher,’ ‘I want to be just like her,’” McRae said. “And I think the reason is, is that she built a relationship with me right away. And she’s still in my life today.”

McRae successfully followed in Johnson’s footsteps. And on Wednesday, the sixth-grade teacher was named Austin Public Schools’ Teacher of the Year during the annual Veterans Day celebration at I.J. Holton Intermediate School Wednesday morning.

“I’m a little blown away right now,” McRae said. “We have a lot of incredible teachers in our school district, so I’m very humbled that of those teachers they selected me.”

She will now go on to represent the Austin district at the state level for the Minnesota Teacher of the Year award.

McRae has worked for Austin Public Schools for nine years, these last three at I.J. Holton. She said a big part of being a teacher for her is building positive relationships with her students.

“I just feel that you have to develop a relationship with students constantly to know who they are as a human being before you could ever possibly reach them academically,” McRae said. “Because if they don’t care about you as a teacher, they don’t care to learn.”

“I try to build really positive relationships with my students, all of them, and that’s 125 of them,” she added.

Teacher of the Year Committee Chairman David Brown said McRae truly cares about her students, which is one reason her name stood out this year.

“Her compassion for students, her love for her students, shines in a way that I can’t describe,” Brown said.

He gave an example of a sledding trip McRae arranged for her students last year when she found out some of them had never been sledding.

“Not only did she get almost every student from her class to go sledding on Skinner’s Hill, but she had about 30 other students from teams that showed up,” Brown laughed. “Her love for students shows no ends, it goes all the way. She is very deserving.”

McRae’s husband, children and parents came to the award ceremony Wednesday to congratulate her, and she got a big hug from her kids after winning. One of her biggest challenges is keeping her work and home lives separate.

“It’s just hard, how do you separate your work from your own family, because to me they are my family,” she said of her students.

“The constant struggle of trying to balance the two, but that’s what the support system of your coworkers are,” she added. “And I am on one incredible team in sixth grade, and their support is incredible.”

She said one of the most important things she’s learned over time is to stay true to herself. As her sixth-grade students try to figure out who they are with all the changes they go through, McRae said it’s important for them to see their teacher caring about herself and building a foundation for her family and children. She has also shared struggles she went through while growing up and said it’s good for the students to know they can relate to their teacher.

“They’re shocked to hear, ‘Wow my teacher actually went through this too,’” McRae said. “So I think when they realize they can relate to some of the things I went through, they see ‘I can get through this. My life isn’t always going to be like this. I can succeed.’”