Jaime Yumiko Brown

Jaime Yumiko Brown is a 2018 California Teacher of the Year and a 2009 Milken Educator. She is an International Baccalaureate English teacher at the School of International Studies at San Diego High, where she has been teaching for the past 17 years. As a graduate of San Diego High herself, Jaime believes in the power of “homegrown” teachers who have lived through the challenges current students are experiencing, and she has helped inspire and mentor her former students in the teaching profession.

Jamie has had three former students as her colleagues at San Diego High. Jaime’s experiences as a biracial yonsei (fourth-generation Japanese American) and her grandparents’ personal stories of internment in concentration camps during World War Two make her especially sensitive to ensuring that all students feel safe and welcome in her classroom. Her personal mantra is “kodomo no tame ni,” a Japanese phrase she learned from her grandmother, which means “for the sake of the children.”

Her professional interests include making student voices visible in the classroom, empowering all students to access rigorous curriculum, teacher recruitment and retention, and mental health first aid training.