Liberty Teacher Named National 'Health Teacher of the Year'

Forget the chalk, health specialist Michelle Henry brings with her an orange ball, a horn, a bottle of fake phlegm, and more when she gives a presentation on the dangers of smoking to an eighth grade class at

“Health can either be the most boring class a student can take or the most exciting,” Henry said. “It’s all in the delivery.”

Henry was recently recognized as the National K-12 Health Teacher of the Year by the American Association for Health Education for both her teaching style and school-wide programs she has implemented.

“She’s excellent and very deserving of the award,” said Pat Larsen, the eighth-grade health teacher at the school who nominated Henry.

Henry has been teaching since 1976 with 14 of those years in the Fairfax County Public School System, with much of her time at Rocky Run Middle School and Liberty Middle School teaching health and physical education.

She was initially attracted to teaching because she loved spending time with kids as a camp counselor in her youth and also liked playing sports, having attended Arizona State University and being on a badminton team which won the national championships in 1975.

“Teaching was a match for me,” Henry said. “I always felt it was essential to find your passion and make it into a career.” 

She has taught everywhere from a military base to a gymnastics facility before making her way to Fairfax County. In her time teaching, one of the school projects she was most happy to have implemented was one where students distributed teddy bears to children being treated for cancer at area hospitals.

“The kids need to know other kids care about them,” Henry said.

She also implemented a wellness program that includes weight loss challenges, walking and running events, relaxation treatments, and nutrition consultations. The program led Liberty to win a Fairfax County Public Schools' (FCPS) Golden Apple wellness award, which according to FCPS is the “highest honor for a school demonstrating excellence in wellness for students and staff members.”

But there is no place where she feels more at home than the classroom.

“My goal is that each day I walk into a classroom, I’m a better teacher than I was before,” Henry said. “Teachers are lifelong learners.”

To that end, Henry has taken a sabbatical in the last year to focus on her own education. Last semester, she taught and took health-related classes at George Mason University as an adjunct instructor.

She still returns to Liberty Middle School and others in the interim as a health specialist, giving lectures on topics from drugs to personal health.

Last Thursday, she visited Liberty Middle School’s eighth grade students for a presentation about tobacco use.

Henry couldn’t stand in the hallway of the school for a minute without a student or staff member stopping her to say hello. On the walls of the classroom, a banner was hung with congratulatory messages for Henry, written by students and other teachers.

“It’s such an adrenaline rush to work in a health classroom,” Henry said. “It’s difficult for a physical education teacher to come from a physical climate to teaching but I realized it wasn’t so hard to create some interactive activities.”

In Friday’s class, Henry brought with her many of those props that she said help engage the students. A white shirt with brown sponges glued to the front helps signify the color lungs become after tobacco use. A bottle of fake phlegm demonstrates the amount of mucous a heavy smoker coughs up.

“In the 1990s, 36 percent of seniors smoked,” Henry said, asking the class: “What is the percentage now?”

When a student raises a hand and answers the question, she tosses them an orange ball (in 2009, 20 percent of seniors smoked). Those who answer questions correctly also get stickers.

“She is an awesome teacher,” said 13-year-old Khalid Bashari, bringing up how active she is in the classroom.

“It’s better then just reading stuff,” said Kayley Bogemann, 13.

Henry developed her teaching style over many years.

“Every year, I’d order something new for my tobacco lesson,” Henry said. “It was sort of a building process.”

Her colleague, Pat Larsen, said that Henry “puts in a lot of extra time and effort for her classes.”

Many of the lessons take up to two hours of preparation before they are ready for students. Though she admits that teaching is quite a lot of work, she plans to go back to the classroom full time next year.

What does she say is her biggest challenge?

“Not having enough hours in the day to plan everything I want to implement for classes,” Henry said. “Teachers are people who like to make a difference.”