“Working With and For”: How Ms. Miller’s Philosophy Led to Statewide Honor

Ms. Sarah Miller being surprised with the Order of the Longleaf Pine at the Watauga Theater Department’s end-of-year celebration. Photo Cred: Charlie Stumb, Watauga Yearbook

Sofia Carmichael, Community Desk Lead

Maya Angelou, Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey, and now Ms. Sarah Miller. What do these people have in common, you might be asking? As of two weeks ago, it is the Order of the Long Leaf Pine. This honor is the highest any civilian can receive in the state of North Carolina and is awarded to someone who has gone above and beyond to serve their community and the state of North Carolina. Anyone who knows Ms. Miller and her countless accomplishments and legacy understands that she is deserving of this title. 

Miller has worked in education for 30 years, 21 of those years at Watauga High School. She has received a teaching Tony, led the Playmakers to 5 state championships, put on tons of successful productions, and has impacted students beyond words. This is just a short list of all that she has accomplished, and this impact deserves to be remembered.

“Late last fall, my wife, Dr. Kelly Walker, and myself thought it would be a really great way to honor Sarah Miller with her 31 years of teaching,” said Zachary Walker, theater teacher. “She’s won all of these state championships, she’s National Board certified, she has her Master's, and oftentimes in our experience, when teachers retire, they typically just kind of disappear and no one ever talks about them anymore, so we thought it would be a great idea.” 

The process of applying for this award includes a nomination form, a biography of the individual's accomplishments, and three letters of recommendation. In order to surprise Miller, it took a lot of behind-the-scenes work by Walker, students throughout the theater department, and countless family and friends. 

“There’s an application, and you have to do some basic information, but then you have to write a biography for the person, or the person writes a biography for themselves, and obviously, we didn’t want her to know, so we actually got Edie Berke [a senior at WHS] to do a fake interview of her career for her retirement,” said Walker. “And then her mom and her sister also gave us information to kind of supplement to create a really awesome biography to show the governor’s office that she was worthy of the Longleaf Pine.” 

The work put into applying was worth it, though, because, when Miller heard the news, she literally kicked off her shoes in a fury of excitement that has never been equaled.  

“I think I kicked my shoes off. I think I yelled ‘Shut up!’ I think I couldn’t talk for a good couple of minutes. I was just so stunned, so surprised,” said Miller. “Then, when I started figuring out how many people knew, like Mr. Walker and all the Playmakers, and so many students, and fellow staff, and friends had all been in on it, and that has made it all the sweeter.” 

Being among the other honorees of the Longleaf Pine would be a shock to anyone, but if you look at the program and the history of it with Ms. Miller, you would no longer be surprised. 

“Them thinking of me in the same sentence as Mebin Rash [a recent recipient as editor of NC Ed Magazine] and Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jackson and Maya Angelou is quite an honor. Like it’s crazy to me that my name is in a similar category,” said Miller. “I think it speaks more to the value of the program. This program is worthy. We’ve done so much with it, and we’ve grown it in such huge ways, so I think it is a confirmation of the strength of the theater program as it is about my work in it.” 

This award was a surprise to no one but Miller. Not only do her numerous accolades and trophies demonstrate the deserving nature of this award, but so does everything Ms. Miller personifies on a daily basis. 

“She always put her students first and made the work that happens on the stage and in the classrooms the main priority. She’s just fairly unselfish, and her dignity and her honor are really strong,” said Walker. “And you know, just to toot her own horn, she just had many accomplishments, and that’s kind of another aspect of the Longleaf Pine. These are civilians who have excelled in their profession.” 

While Miller had excelled at teaching theater, she has done so much more for her students. She has helped students find their place, taught a community how to celebrate and create in a time of tragedy, and influenced the ways students will move through their lives. One defining moment of her career was helping last year’s Playmakers write and perform the devised theater production of “Surge” which told the story of the impact Hurricane Helene had on western North Carolina.

“What an honor and a privilege that it has been to help students find their voice creatively, professionally, and educationally. What an honor that is,” said Miller. “Surge is easily a top 10 experience, but it’s complicated because a natural disaster that almost destroyed our county is the reason that play happened, but maybe the picture there is that, out of tragedy, you can find goodness.” 

Even with the various accolades and achievements, Miller wants to mainly be remembered for her impact on students and her legacy to live on through the way they approach their lives and continue to inspire people to create and support the arts. 

“All I want to do is help students find who they are, empower them, support them, redirect when they need it. These 21st-century skills of learning how to work with and for others, even if you don’t care for them, are a real-life skill,” said Miller. “Working with and for is the legacy that I inherited from Trimella [a former theater teacher of Watauga High School], and it’s what I practiced for these 30 years.”