Corinne Zimmerman believes her job is to get students at Homewood-Flossmoor High School to have fun in biology, whether they’re a great learner or someone who needs an extra assist. 

“My job is to make your kids love science. Especially as a freshman bio teacher I truly think I can make or break a path for a kid. I want this to be your favorite class,” she said. 

For her efforts in the classroom, Zimmerman won the Excellence in Encouraging Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) Award from the National Association of Biology Teachers at the group’s national convention in St. Louis in October. 

“I was privileged to win the award,” she said. Zimmerman is known to work with students “who don’t fit a certain mold or who have certain needs and (I’m) developing programs in systemic ways to help them be successful in a high school setting that doesn’t always meets the needs of every student.”

After earning her bachelor’s degree in biology from Dominican University, Zimmerman took a teaching job in Joliet. During her 10 years there, she would take extra steps outside of her daily teaching schedule to help students who’d fallen behind and needed credit recovery. Many couldn’t give time to their studies due to family or work pressures, or they were slow to grasp concepts because English wasn’t their first language. Others lacked motivation. Without her assistance, students would not be able to advance to the next level class.

“I was just trying to meet a student’s needs and being creative with them,” she said. Lessons Zimmerman designed were based on what the classroom teacher wanted the student to achieve. 

“Students, depending on how motivated they were, could cover science, English and math (for recovery) in one semester,” she said, and it would save them the time and expense of taking the class over in summer school.

When Zimmerman came to H-F four years ago, she continued to share after class schedule hours with students here who have fallen behind or may have a language barrier. Her application for the JEDI Award included a letter of recommendation from a parent whose daughter Zimmerman helped while illness kept her from H-F.

“I just taught kids. I don’t view it as good deeds, I just view it as serving kids and sometimes I have the capacity to do this and reach these kids and sometimes I’m a little more limited,” but she said she works closely with fellow teachers, administrators and families. “We’ve been able to reach certain kids to love and engage in science, so that’s just kind of my drive.”

As a student at Bloom High School, Zimmerman said she tested well in English and reading and teachers encouraged her to look at those college majors, but she recalls her curiosity was really driven to science.

“One way I reach students is by telling them this wasn’t easy for me either. I wasn’t the science student who got it right away. I was the one who had to keep asking questions and trying. I tell them that those who become doctors and engineers and anything in the science realm, you have to persist. It’s not easy for anybody and I think that’s something students will internalize and get it.”

At H-F, Zimmerman helped develop the two-year-old human anatomy/physiology course for students looking at careers in medical professions.  

Zimmerman knows teachers do more than teach. They can be an influencer, a mentor and in her case a coach. She just finished a season as girls volleyball assistant coach, and she’s the sophomore class sponsor for student government.