Until five months ago, Dr. Kayra Merrills, the new Spanish teacher at CHS, had her life planned out. After working for five years on her PhD and finally finishing her dissertation, she was looking for job opportunities at the collegiate level in the Maryland and D.C. area. Having lived there most of her life, Merrills was not anticipating having to move.

However, everything changed in a matter of a few days.

Mario, Merrills’s husband, was offered a job promotion in the medical sales industry in the St. Louis area.

“[My husband] was offered the job at the end of May,” Merrills said. “We had to make a decision within three days of whether or not we wanted to do this.”

For Merrills, the decision was not easy to make.

“That wasn’t in our plans. This past year, I had been applying to universities and colleges to be a second languages education professor,” Merrills said. “This was a serious shock for me.”

After weighing the pros and cons, Merrills and her husband decided to pursue his promotion and began the process of relocating to St. Louis. Although initially interested in university positions, Merrills expanded her search to include high schools in the St. Louis area, as well.

A few days into her search, she came across CHS.

“I didn’t know much about CHS,” Merrills said. “I did do a little bit of research on Clayton and saw that it was a great school district, but definitely not to the extent of what I know now, about what an amazing place it is.”

Soon enough, Merrills flew to St. Louis to interview for a position as a CHS Spanish teacher.

“I’m happy that I wasn’t stuck when I needed to move to St. Louis,” Merrills said. “I’m glad that I had the energy to be rerouted to a place that I don’t know.”

At CHS, Merrills gets exposure to students of every grade level by teaching Spanish I, Spanish III and Spanish Conversation.

“I feel like I won the lottery,” Merrills said. “Out of all of my teaching experiences [in elementary, middle and high school], this has been my best. I genuinely really enjoy my students and I really am appreciative of all of the resources that Clayton School District has, and specifically the World Languages Department.”

Merrills’s move to St. Louis was not the first significant change in her life. Merrills, whose father joined the American military when she was a baby, was born in Panama City, Panama. Her father had the choice to be based in Germany or in the United States and, upon the persuasion of his family, chose the U.S.

Merrills was raised in a Spanish-speaking household; her mother, afraid that her five children would forget their Panamanian roots, did not allow them to speak English in the house. Instead, the children learned to speak English in school.

Merrills used this experience as a native speaker and student of Spanish in her research in doctorate school. Today, she uses this in the classroom.

“On a daily basis they are expected to do ‘verbals.’ After I’ve taught something, I ask each and every one of them to share a sentence or a question related to the vocabulary and grammatical structure that we are practicing. I do it, for the most part, in every class. That is one of the things that I do to help build students’ confidence,” Merrills said.

Merrills has been able to use her experience of being exposed to an intersection of cultures from a young age in her teaching.

“Being in St. Louis, there aren’t that many Afro-Latina women, so I proudly love to share that we exist. I am a black woman, but I’m also a woman of Latina heritage,” Merrills said. “I’ve never been confused about trying to choose one or the other. I am absolutely both. I grew up eating rice and beans. I grew up listening to salsa music and merengue.”

Because of her unique genealogical history, Merrills has a unique perspective in observing racial conflicts involving people of African heritage and Latin Americans.

“I can understand and relate to both of them because I feel duly linked and connected to both.”