Three local educators named semifinalists for NH Teacher of the Year

Rebecca Fortgang sees on a regular basis how her Pembroke Academy students grow their confidence by speaking French.

Gabriel Cohen relishes the creativity of his performing arts and music students at Concord High School and applauds the leadership and discipline they gain through these efforts.

At Rundlett Middle School, Katherine McDonough helps her classes make connections between the Latin they learn and different aspects of ancient cultures.

All three educators, unique in their own right, have been named semifinalists for the 2027 New Hampshire Teacher of the Year Award. They are among 11 total semifinalists, selected out of a pool of 124 nominees and 51 applicants statewide.

“It’s been a great push to do some introspection,” said McDonough. “They ask you a lot of questions about your beliefs and teaching philosophy in this process. And so it’s given me sort of a push and an excuse to pause and think about what I see as valuable and what’s important to me, which, in normal day-to-day teaching, a lot of times you’re scrambling through the whole day, so you don’t have time to do that.”

The Teacher of the Year award, administered by the state Department of Education, honors “one exceptionally skilled and dedicated teacher to serve as an ambassador for all the excellent teachers in our state.” Educators are either nominated by others or have the ability to apply themselves.

“We have so many talented and committed educators in New Hampshire, and this program helps to shine a spotlight on those who are making a profound difference in the field of education – helping students to grow, learn, and excel,” said Department of Education Commissioner Caitlin Davis in a statement on Thursday.

Next month, the program will select its finalists, with the winner announced in June prior to the conclusion of the school year. Last year’s awardee was Megan Philbrook, an Andover social studies teacher.

Gabriel Cohen

Performing arts can serve as a tool for creating well-rounded students capable of going on to do whatever they seek, said Gabriel Cohen, who teaches band, orchestra, music theory, adaptive music and more at Concord High School.

Cohen also holds the role of performing arts coordinator for the Concord School District.

“I feel like students in general are learning life skills through our program, and even if they don’t go on to be musicians, the things that they learn and do in the classroom benefit them in life — good skills for being a good person and a successful, productive person in society,” he said.

Cohen has been teaching in Concord since 2008 and has spent a total of 26 years in education.

“It’s a huge honor, it’s shocking,” he said of achieving semifinalist status. “I never thought I would be in this position. I’m very humbled and honored that I was even thought of in the first place.”

For him, it all comes back to the potential of his students.

“I’m so fortunate. We have great, great students, very talented kids and so awesome to work with, and they’re always striving to be the best,” he said. “Very, very lucky to work in Concord in the community that we have.”

Rebecca Fortgang

New Hampshire is fertile ground for learning French, according to Rebecca Fortgang, who teaches the language at Pembroke Academy.

“It doesn’t say ‘bienvenue’ on the welcome sign for nothing,” she said. “There’s lots of really cool opportunities here in the state to speak French locally at different groups, or to take students on day trips up over the border to Canada. So I really just love it, and getting to know the kids and getting to watch them learn the language.”

Fortgang knew from a young age that she wanted to become an educator. As soon as she graduated from Keene State in 2014, she started teaching and never looked back. She joined Pembroke Academy in December after six years at Fall Mountain.

Being named a semifinalist speaks volumes of all the schools where she’s worked and where her teaching philosophy was formed, Fortgang said.

“It’s not just me, it’s my students, it’s the other teachers that I’m with. So it’s really a win for us all,” she said.

Overall, she hopes to spread the word about the impact that educators around her are having in their classrooms.

“I think that it’s really important that people learn more about the Teacher of the Year program, so that people can nominate more teachers, because having been to other teachers’ classrooms and worked with people and gone to presentations at conferences and connected with so many different teachers all over the state already, there are so many people doing amazing, amazing things,” said Fortgang.

Katherine McDonough

Although Latin is technically a “dead” language, Katherine McDonough is bringing it to life for her students.

“I really love planning and executing interactive activities in the classroom and outside of the classroom,” she said. “This week, we had a birthday party for Rome. Rome’s birthday is a festival that happens in April, and we got to have the high school classes meet the middle school classes at Memorial Field, and we did some games and activities around Rome and the founding of Rome. And the kids were just so happy to get out of the classroom and run around for a while.”

She’s been teaching in Concord for 13 years, ever since graduating from college. Twelve of those years have been spent at Rundlett Middle School.

“I think they’re really a fun age group to teach a foreign language to, and it just feels like I get to have fun and enjoy myself every day,” she said.

McDonough also serves as the district’s World Language Coordinator. Beyond cultural exploration, she sees students thrive in different ways.

“I also think world language is really important, especially at the middle school level, because it’s one of the first times students get to pick a class,” she said. “It’s not one of the classes that’s pre-loaded into their schedule. So they get to decide, ‘What am I interested in?’ And it’s, I think, one of the earliest times is probably that, and music education, they get to start thinking about, ‘Who am I, and what do I want?’”