Willow Glen Resident

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Photograph by Vicki Thompson

Teachers: Karla Miller (left) and her daughter, Sarah, both teach in the San Jose Unified School District. Karla Miller is an art teacher at Willow Glen Middle School, and Sarah Miller is an English teacher at Willow Glen High School.

Mother, daughter chose same professions

By Mayra Flores De Marcotte

Like mother, like daughters. Karla Miller and her daughters Sarah and Kate share a common passion, as they are all teachers.

Karla Miller is an art teacher at Willow Glen Middle School. She began teaching at the middle school level after she graduated from college.

Miller, who studied French and earned her degree in art from Fresno State University, never considered teaching as a career until she took a class that combined her love of art with education. The next year, she became a student teacher. Once she graduated, however, there were no available art teaching jobs.

A stroke of luck changed everything.

"One day I was wandering the hallways of the art department and a professor of mine came up to me and asked if I had a job yet," she says.

The professor knew of a job opening at a local school. Miller was one of three applicants.

"The school took a chance with me," Miller says.

A year later, however, Miller married and moved out of the area, and it wasn't until all three of her daughters, Sarah, Kate and Courtney, were in school that Miller decided to go back to teaching.

Even before then, she was creating a passion in her daughters. She would take her daughters to art museums before they could even walk, she says. Miller exposed them to all forms of art from visual to performing. It wasn't just outside the home; it was in the home also.

"I had a studio at home, and they would come in and paint with me," she says.

When Sarah Miller started middle school, Miller decided to go back to teaching and took her California Basic Educational Skills Test to substitute at middle schools in the San Jose Unified School District. Once her daughters reached high school, Miller came back to teaching full time.

"I love teaching art because you can touch all kinds of kids," Miller says.

In her classroom, Miller is able to make the same impact on both honors students and students struggling in school.

Miller teaches a yearlong course in art that covers basic art fundamentals and display-ready skills to a general art class for sixth- through eighth-graders.

"Some students get lost in their work," she says. "Sometimes all I have to do is walk around and monitor them. It's another world. I teach the class as if they are young artists."

The range of ages isn't the only thing that sets Miller's group of students apart. She also has students who are both native English speakers as well as English-language learners.

"It doesn't matter what language they speak," she says, "because here we speak the language of art."

Next door at Willow Glen High School, daughter Sarah Miller teaches English and language composition to high school students. She's been teaching at Willow Glen High for the last nine years.

While in high school, Sarah realized she loved to read and liked to talk about what she learned, so she considered teaching a natural fit.

This was enhanced through the time she spent with her French teacher in and out of her classroom. That mentoring relationship left a lasting impression.

Sarah became her teacher's assistant and was allowed to take on a lot of the responsibilities, including reading the student essays.

"If I do what she did for us, that would be enough," she says.

Although she went into education like her mother, Sarah says her mother's career choice wasn't her driving force.

"I do it because I get excited over my students getting excited about stuff," she says, "not necessarily about academics."

As a teacher, Sarah has discovered other benefits.

"I knew I just liked to learn things," she says. "I have learned more over the years from teaching than from being in school."

Sarah's career choice didn't surprise her mother; it was Kate's decision to enter the education field that was unexpected.

Kate Miller knew she wanted to teach since she was in third grade.

"I remember I wanted to be a teacher because of the teachers I had at the time," Kate says. "I thought they were good at what they did and wanted to emulate them."

Kate, however, took a different route, with a double major in environmental studies and politics. But her love for children was a constant in her life.

"I enjoy working with kids," Kate says. So in 2004, Kate began teaching elementary school students at Payne School in West San Jose.

After going on observations with a colleague of her mother's, she gave in.

"I love being around the smaller children because everything is so new to them," Kate says. "They have an amazing energy and are excited about everything. You just feed off of that, and it reminds you of what's important."