This school year, a package of chapulines, or grasshoppers, arrived at Melissa Corwin’s classroom. 

One of her Latin American Studies students, Kayla Perez, had given a presentation on Oaxaca, Mexico. Corwin tasks each student with interviewing a person closely connected to a different culture. After learning about the assignment, Perez’s grandmother mailed the edible insects to Summit High School so classmates could experience a piece of Oaxacan cuisine firsthand.

“Through this direct connection to Oaxaca and her family, she was able to make it as authentic as possible,” Corwin said. “Instead of just studying a place with Google searches, I want you to go and speak to a person that’s directly part of that culture.”

Moments like these have become a hallmark of Corwin’s classroom, where students often take the lead in teaching peers about their cultures, languages and experiences. 

The approach recently earned statewide recognition: Corwin, a dual-language humanities teacher at Summit High, was named one of 21 semifinalists for Colorado’s 2027 Teacher of the Year award, selected from nearly 300 applicants statewide. 

Corwin has taught in Summit School District for seven years after spending the first four years of her teaching career at Aurora West College Preparatory Academy, a middle and high school serving newcomer immigrant and refugee students. She said between 20 and 30 languages were represented in each class.

“At that time, I didn’t know Spanish to the degree I do now, but it was like a boot camp in education,” Corwin said. “It was magical.”

In addition to teaching civics, economics and U.S. history courses in Spanish, Corwin created Summit High School’s Latin American Studies elective and teaches a freshman Pathways class. 

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She said two of her Latin American Studies students nominated her for the Teacher of the Year award. 

“Coming from students, that means a lot,” Corwin said. 

She admitted that at first, she assumed the students were joking.

“We have a humorous relationship, so I thought they were kidding, if I’m being honest,” Corwin said. “I thought they wanted a higher grade.”

But a couple days later, the students showed Corwin the nomination paperwork, beginning an application process that included two essays, recommendations and a video submission discussing advocacy in education.

Corwin’s path to the classroom began while working for a refugee resettlement agency in Spokane, Wa. She said working with refugee teenagers convinced her that she was meant for a career in education. 

Corwin recalled working with and tutoring two sisters who, with their parents, had fled religious persecution and domestic terrorism in northern Iraq. On the same day she taught them about homecoming and where to buy dresses, Corwin took the girls home, where “the parents sat me down and asked me personally for $5,000 of ransom money for the girls’ aunt and the father’s sister because she had been kidnapped by ISIS.”

Corwin described the moment as a “whiplash of reality and culture.” She said it reshaped her understanding of the challenges students can carry into the classroom. 

“I just grew up in a very sheltered suburban Denver community, so those were some big moments for me,” Corwin said. “People don’t understand the insane challenges that a lot of our kids are facing, and then they have to show up to first period and do the quadratic formula just like everybody else.”

Corwin said her experience at the magnet school in Aurora forced her to learn how to adapt lessons for students with dramatically different educational backgrounds, language abilities and behavioral stressors. 

“You have to come in with a curriculum for each kid, so that really, really, really helped me learn how to be a teacher,” she said. 

Corwin and her husband, David Corwin, a math teacher at Summit Middle School, moved to Summit County seven years ago. Entering bilingual education for the first time, Corwin said teaching Spanish to native Spanish-speakers was humbling. 

“You have to come in with a lot of grace and ask them for support, and you learn together,” Corwin said. “Once I learned that, things got a lot easier.”

Today, she tells her students that everyone in the classroom — including their teacher — is still learning. 

“It’s my first goal to make it a super safe spot for everyone to learn the language they need at the pace that they need,” Corwin said. “Myself included.”

Corwin said one of the most rewarding aspects of dual-language education is watching language serve as what she called a “great equalizer.” Students who might be quiet in traditional classes often become leaders when discussing economics in their own native language, while others learn to step back and listen.

“We’re all language learners in a dual-language program,” Corwin said. “It’s the most beautiful thing to me.”

As a semifinalist, Corwin has moved on to an additional round of questions through the Colorado Department of Education, which will announce around eight finalists in September. The Teacher of the Year will be named in October.