Everybody should have a teacher like Jan Miller — one who makes learning fun and whose influence her students still feel long after they are grown.

As a high school English teacher in Celina, Mrs. Miller took her students outside the classroom and into environments where they could experience literature in a fresh, innovative way: from art exhibits to the theater and even onstage, where she insisted they participate in Shakespearean plays. “Shakespeare is made to be acted, not read,” she says. Her passion for the works of The Bard took her to Washington, D.C.’s Folger Shakespeare Library in 1985, where she was one of only 40 U.S. teachers invited to participate in a Shakespeare study for educators.

In 1992, determined to gain the same kind of parental support for academics that athletics had long enjoyed, she formed an academic booster club called Celina Association for Renaissance Excellence (CARE).

The organization provided incentives for academic achievement and improvement. In addition to offering small, classroom-based rewards, CARE has grown into a vital fundraiser for local scholarships, including participation in the Redman Scholarship Fund. Mrs. Miller retired in 1998, but the CARE program continues its important mission.

A native of Anna, Mrs. Miller served on the Collin County Red Cross board and as her church’s organist for 25 years. She is a member of the Collin County Historical Commission and president of the Anna Area Historical Preservation Society, and she has maintained a museum in Anna that preserves a general store that has been in her family for more than a century. She and her high school sweetheart, Virgil, raised four children and have been married for 45 years.