Pamela Puryear

Pamela Puryear is a mathematics teacher at Lawrence County High School in Louisa, Kentucky. Born the youngest of three to a family of teachers, it was no surprise that she followed in her relatives’ footsteps to become a teacher herself. “My mom was a school teacher for 30-some years, aunts and uncles were school teachers, my grandfather was a superintendent and a principal and hence I became a teacher”. She went to community college for a couple years before transferring to Virginia Tech with the intention of becoming an accountant. However, finding the campus too big, she transferred once again to a small college in Virginia called Emory & Henry where she changed her major and obtained her teaching degree. Pamela planned on becoming a history teacher but was discouraged by her mother who commented that “all coaches were history teachers and (I) would never get a job”.
And she’s remained a math teacher for over 26 years, with 14 years in Virginia and 12 in Kentucky under her belt, and no plans of retiring anytime soon. She’s worked everywhere from private schools to public schools to a junior correctional facility for substance and drug use. This is her fifth year teaching at Lawrence County High School and over the years she has developed an unmatched passion for this district. Her objective is to help turn the district around academically so that it isn’t low-performing, or low-achieving, as determined by standardised