Whether numbers are your nemesis or treading water is a terror, Coach Roberts is here to help out.
She specializes in geometry, statistics and aquatics.

While this is her second year at Lake, this will be her sixteenth year teaching with 11 years at Pearland High School and four years at Alvin High School.

Mrs. Roberts also went to school in the area before she started teaching.

“I’m from Kentucky but I started school in Manvel, before there was a Manvel High School,” Mrs. Roberts said. “I graduated from Alvin High School and I’ve been here since kindergarten.”

Prior to her teaching career she was a computer specialist with a degree in geography and environmental science.

“I think I [got into teaching] by accident,” Roberts said. “I used to work downtown with a corporate job, sort of an accounting-type job.”

What spurred the coach into the teaching field was originally the urge to be closer to her family following the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

“The fear of not being able to get out of a place and to your family in a time of need was weighing on me,” Roberts said.
She comes from a family of first responders, so she believes it is her responsibility to make sure that her family is okay while everyone else is on the frontlines.

“I decided to go back to school and to bide my time I started substitute teaching,” Roberts said. “I made connections with some of my old teacher friends.”
According to Mrs. Roberts, most of the friends had pointed out that she already had a degree and just suggested she take the test to get a certificate to teach.

“I went through with this because it put me close to my kids,” Roberts said. “All I wanted was to be closer to my family.”
Incidentally she never taught at either of her kid’s schools.

Her drive for staying in teaching comes from lessons that she would teach her daughter. Her hope was to pass some of those same values onto the kids in her classroom.

“I believe it’s a part of the role that I took on to help my students mature and be better versions of themselves,” Roberts said.

According to Mrs. Roberts, the subject she’s currently teaching was one that spoke to her more than any that were offered to her.

“I’m more [inclined] to geometry and statistics because to me they can both be applied to the real world,” Roberts said.
Currently she teaches in hopes of offering the students she teaches life skills that they will need to succeed later on. She claims that she wants to offer support to kids that may not have it at home.

However, math is only half of her day, and only one of her strong suits.

She’s been coaching for five years now but she has been around sports all of her life. Both of her parents ran cross country, she took up that along with swimming in a summer league.

“I’ll say I’m competitive, but I’m not competitive in a field where I know I’m going to lose,” Roberts said. “I don’t like to play if my outcome is a loss.”

Later on, when she had children, they had taken up sports and playing instruments in band.

“When my kids started picking sports, they naturally picked swim,” Roberts said.  “They also picked percussion, so I have one kiddo on drumline and one in the pit.”

According to Coach Roberts, she was familiar with the mechanics of water polo but that wasn’t why she started coaching the sport.

“When my daughter was in the water, I got to see a personality in her, it seriously helped her feel included, that made me more interested in the sport,” Mrs. Roberts said.

The coach is very family-oriented and enjoys being able to connect with those around her, although she doesn’t consider herself very good with people.

“I’m not a very good first impressions person, I’m not really shy but I’m not jumping to my feet to have a conversation.”

In her classes she will sit students in groups, excluding test days, in hopes of encouraging conversation amongst students.

“I think people need to learn how to communicate with one another again,” Mrs. Roberts said.

Overall, the coach just wants her students and athletes alike to have a form of a connection that isn’t to their phone either inside or outside of the classroom.