A Kansas City teacher whose mission is to be a change agent is Missouri’s 2026 Teacher of the Year. Kimberly Sixta, a Social Studies teacher in the Hickman Mills School District, told Missourinet she is over the moon about the award.
“Outside of, of course, having my children and all these things, this is just really one of the big moments in my life. It means, like, everything up to this moment. I’ve poured my life into this work and it’s kind of like I made a difference – it’s worth,” she said.
Sixta, a mother of six children, said her goal has been to reach kids before they make life-changing decisions.
“I started out in Probation and Parole,” said Sixta. “I was working with at-risk youth. At the time, I just felt like that work was so reactive. I wanted to be more proactive to those points where we affect people’s lives for the better and become change agents.”
A statewide committee chose Sixta, becoming the 57th Missouri Teacher of the Year since the program’s inception in 1957.
“I still keep thinking is this real? When I came in on Friday, you know, I wasn’t even supposed to be coming into work on Friday, so I was completely tricked and caught off guard and so ill-prepared. Yeah, I’ve pinched myself about 1,000 times,” she says.
Sixta was also her district’s Teacher of the Year in 2014.
She attended the Hickman Mills School District as a student and has been a teacher there throughout her entire 28-year career.
“There’s been fourteen of us in my family that went through the Hickman Mills School District,” Sixta said.
She will be honored during the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s Teacher of the Year recognition event in Columbia on Monday, October 27, along with the other finalists, semi-finalists, and Regional Teachers of the Year. Sixta will move on to serve as Missouri’s representative in the National Teacher of the Year program.
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