Renee Phelps knew from her elementary school days she would one day be a teacher. Little did she know while playing she would one day be Baldwin County’s Elementary School Teacher of the Year.

Phelps has been teaching for 26 years, and this is her ninth year teaching fifth grade at Summerdale School. Before coming to Summerdale, Phelps taught in Mobile and Washington counties. Her family moved to the area to be closer to family and for more opportunities for her children.

“Our oldest two swam competitively year-round and you can’t really do that in Leroy,” Phelps says, laughing.

Phelps and her husband, Scott, have four children. Jack is 13 years old and a seventh grader at Summerdale with Phelps. Kate is a 17-year-old junior at Fairhope High School. Trista is 19 and a biomedical engineering major at Florida Institute of Technology. Tyler is 20 years old and is also a Florida Tech. Both Tyler and Trista swim for the university.

Phelps favorite aspect of teaching is seeing previous students that have graduated come back to the classroom.

“Yesterday was really neat,” she says. “We had seniors come back to visit. It’s fun seeing kids when they’ve graduated. I asked them what they remember about my classroom and they all said they remember me reading the book ‘Alabama Moon.’”

Phelps was diagnosed with colon cancer on May 1, 2014, but didn’t let it affect her teaching duties or students.

“I was able to work throughout the cancer,” she says. “It kept my mind off of everything. One of the nurses at Mitchell Cancer Institute told me to let them worry about the cancer, and I should live as normal life as possible. I really took that to heart.”

Phelps expresses her gratitude toward the school and parents for their help during her time with cancer.

“I want to thank everybody from parents that cooked dinners and helped during the cancer,” she says. “I had a mother that came every day and sanitized door handles and any public area to prevent me from getting sick with my low white blood cell count. The school sold pink and blue shirts for breast and colon cancer and divided the money raised and gave it to me and the other Summerdale Teacher of the Year, Kim Sharp, who is battling breast cancer. There was just loads of kindness.”