Vancouver teacher named ESD Teacher of the Year

Harney Heights — Martin Luther King Elementary School preschool teacher Kendra Yamamoto was named Educational Service District 112 region Teacher of the Year, and is one of nine finalists from around the state for the Washington State Teacher of the Year Award. Yamamoto also works as a mentor for new kindergarten teachers around Vancouver Public Schools, and is a member of the district’s Early Learning Task Force. She’s the coordinator of Jump Start, a summer program for incoming kindergarten students. In her application, Yamamoto wrote that she knew she wanted to be a teacher when she was 5 and started teaching her sister and neighbors in the living room. “I lived and breathed school,” she wrote in the application letter, according to a release from the district. “It was my dream to be a teacher. I had no doubt that I would fulfill that dream.”