Every child loves to let their imagination run wild and pretend to be a heroic knight, enchanting mermaid or sleuthing spy. Kimiko Cowley-Pettis spent her evenings after elementary school playing teacher. Lining up her teddy bears, she would teach the toys what she had learned in class. After weekend church services, the stuffed animals became her congregation and she the Sunday school teacher.

Today, she lives out that fantasy as an English Language Arts teacher at Chicago’s Avalon Park Elementary School. “Teaching is something I was born to do. It has always been my passion,” says Cowley-Pettis. Of all the joys that teaching brings her, the Chicago native feels she makes the greatest impact on student’s lives when she introduces them to service-learning and helps them take action on homelessness, an issue that—literally—hits home for some of them.

While always passionate about helping others, Cowley-Pettis’s drive to do good was amplified after her niece was murdered. Honor student Hadiya Pendleton, 15, was standing with a group of friends in the city’s Harsh Park in January 2013, when she was shot and killed by a man who mistook the group for a rival gang. As Cowley-Pettis worked through that devastating loss, she became determined to make her niece proud by honoring her positive personality and giving back to her community. Cowley-Pettis’s motivation to help youth create change was also inspired by her niece’s classmates, who started a movement in her memory to raise awareness of gun violence.

Cowley-Pettis loves seeing her students realize that controversial issues, such as gun violence and poverty, are problems that directly impact all of us. Chicago Public School students are provided with free breakfast and lunch each day. When Cowley-Pettis explained that those are the only meals some children get in a day because their parents can’t afford food, her students began volunteering at a local shelter. It was then that some of her students divulged to her that they themselves had experienced homelessness and knew some of those they were helping to feed.

“They knew what it was like to be that person standing there waiting on that meal for a stranger with a nice heart and extra funds to provide for them,” she says.

According to the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, 17,894 students enrolled in Chicago Public Schools were homeless during the 2017–2018 school year. Student homelessness is one of the tough issues teachers are faced with in their classrooms.

Cowley-Pettis has used WE resources to help students in Grades 6 to 8 make connections between what they learn in the classroom and real-world issues. They strengthen their understanding of subject matter while discovering how to have an impact on local and global issues. “Service-learning is a way for them to understand that, even though you’re a teenager, you can bring about change. You are a powerful person,” she says. “All it takes is that one person with that crazy idea, bringing it to fruition, to impact hundreds, millions of people.”

Cowley-Pettis has seen students save up their allowance to buy donations for food banks or sleep outside so they can experience homelessness firsthand. Some students have felt so strongly about the cause that they’ve asked to come back and volunteer with her even after they’ve moved on to high school. Still others have returned to thank her for opening their eyes to such critical issues. It’s instances like this that make her glad that she’s a teacher.

To thank her for inspiring the next generation to make a difference, at WE Day Illinois Cowley-Pettis was presented with a $500 Walgreens WE Teachers Award to purchase much-needed supplies for her classroom and her students as they continue to make a positive impact on their community and honor her niece’s memory. “Getting students involved and active and having them see that what they’re doing is going to empower and impact others, it just makes me feel good,” she says. “I love it—I really do.”