After teaching across five states and school systems of every size, Alliance High School Language Arts teacher Cathy Fingar blends “old-school” writing muscle with fresh, relevant reading to raise expectations, build confidence, and make seniors hungry to be heard.
MARK KESZLER
Nspire Today! Feature Writer
ALLIANCE – For Cathy Fingar, the map of her career looks like a loop: it begins in Alliance, traces a wide arc through Illinois, Minnesota, Kansas, and Texas, and then returns to the Nebraska Panhandle. “My very first year of teaching was here at Alliance High School (1998–99),” she said. “It’s funny how life works. My very first year of teaching was here, and now I’m back again all these years later teaching seniors.”
The moves, driven by her husband’s railroad transfers, built a résumé that reads like a crash course in American schooling. She has taught English in compact rural districts, affluent suburban high schools, and sprawling campuses where the daily roster alone could rival the population of a small town.
Fingar and her husband Alfred moved back to Alliance in the summer of 2022. “The only opening when we moved back was at the middle school,” she recalled. “But then the next year Roxy Smith retired, so that’s when I started teaching seniors at the high school. So this is the third year teaching seniors at the high school.”
Today, she anchors the senior English program, teaches dual-credit composition through Nebraska Wesleyan University’s Honors Academy, coordinates the SAT, and serves as English department head. The titles matter less than the through line she brings to them: reading that feels alive and writing that feels consequential.
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