Staff Spotlight for May: Lissa Avis inspires hard work and success

Mathematics teacher Lissa Avis has her biggest lesson for her students posted on her wall for years: “Don’t wish for it; work for it!” She tells them with hard work, anything is possible. And she believes it.

Article and photos by Amy Haggerty

Lissa Avis once walked the halls and studied in the classrooms of Stockbridge High School as a student. Now, she’s sharing her mathematical talents with students as their teacher.

Her biggest lesson has been posted on her wall for years: “Don’t wish for it; work for it!” She tells students with hard work, anything is possible. And she believes it.

“Avis is an outstanding teacher who focuses every minute into getting the most out of her students,” Stockbridge High School Principal Jeff Trapp said. “She does a great job pushing and motivating our students.”

On learning of Avis’ potential selection for SCN’s Staff Spotlight, school board member Cindy Lance wrote, “Last weekend our youngest daughter was commenting again about how Mrs. Avis is the best math teacher she has ever encountered and how she was instrumental in preparing her for the Computer Engineering field.”

The hometown girl grew up on a dairy farm on Brogan Road in Stockbridge. Her parents, Larry and Holly Steffey, both fourth generation farmers in the area, purchased the Steffey farm when she was in middle school. She has two siblings, Jakob and Amy.

Avis spent her summers doing chores on the farm, but her parents always stressed the importance of school, community service and athletic participation. Avis was in band, Honor Society, Science Olympiad, Girl Scouts, cross country, volleyball and track at Stockbridge High School.

In 1998, she graduated from Michigan State University with a Bachelor of Science, with a major in mathematics and a minor in chemistry — and a 4.0 grade-point average.

She continued her studies at MSU, completing her student teaching in 1999 and a Master of Arts in Teaching and Curriculum in 2002. Now she is attending Lansing Community College and studying accounting to use as a second career when she retires from teaching.

Avis was hired in the fall of 2001 to teach high school math, which included pre-calculus, consumer math and geometry. This year, she has taken on teaching four sections of eighth-grade math and one section of calculus to 12th-graders at Stockbridge Junior/Senior High. She is also the Mathematics Department chairman, which requires her to keep up on innovative ideas for the math teachers at SHS.

Avis married Andrew Avis, of Fowlerville, Mich., in 2005. They have two children, both attending Smith Elementary School in Stockbridge. Alexander, 8, is a second-grader and Rachel, 7, is in first grade.

The idea that teaching was her calling developed back in her middle-school days, she said. Classmates encouraged her by saying, “when you explain it, it’s so easy for me to understand.”

Now, at the same school, she works with a dedicated staff that puts in long hours “to inspire and prepare this community’s youth.”

She also sees numerous times that her students learn from each other in the classroom.

“In my day-to-day teaching, what makes my heart swell with happiness is seeing students helping one another to understand difficult mathematical concepts,” she said.

As a teacher, Avis enjoys finding out about her students’ lives after high school. “I am proud to hear about and see their accomplishments on Facebook, whether those successes be in academia, business, military, a trade or raising a family,” she said.