‘You have to love what you do.’ Meet Miami-Dade’s four teacher of the year finalists.

It’s not easy being a teacher nowadays.

There’s growing expectations, mounting responsibilities and, of course, less than desirable compensation.

Ask the four finalists of Miami-Dade County’s teacher of the year competition what keeps them going and they unanimously agree: Their students’ success makes it all worth it. But they’ll tell you: It takes patience, empathy and a passion to keep themselves learning.

One will be named the 2019 Francisco R. Walker Miami-Dade County Teacher of the Year on Jan. 31 along with the rookie teacher of the year. The awards dinner will be at 6 p.m. at the DoubleTree by Hilton Miami Airport & Convention Center at 711 NW 72nd Ave. The winner will advance to the state-level competition.

North Region: Ray L. Parris Jr., Hialeah Miami-Lakes Senior High

It was a Miami art teacher who inspired a young Ray Parris to morph his talent into a real-world application.

He had already gone through so much. When Hurricane Hugo devastated St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 1989, Parris’ school was uninhabitable for a year. His art teacher persuaded his mother to send Parris to Miami to attend a prestigious school he had never heard of — New World School of the Arts.

Parris had to work to earn his spot in the revered magnet school. But it was a New World teacher named Ed Love who opened doors for him, inspiring him to create graffiti prints for jackets, pants and CD covers, mixing in his interest in entrepreneurship. New World was also where he met his wife, Quintera, now an assistant principal at Miami Central Senior High.

Now at 46, Parris says he uses lessons from Love as the foundation for his lessons in his digital media classes at Hialeah Miami-Lakes Senior High. In a time where education is sometimes geared to teaching to a test, Parris says he constantly modifies lessons to be fun and relevant.

Parris, a model lead teacher for the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship, compares his class to a video game. There’s buzzers and project-based collaboration, with students often pitching business ideas “Shark Tank”-style. Some lessons are in a “Family Feud” format.

“You’re dealing with Playstation, ‘Fortnite,’ you can’t come in the classroom with ‘Please turn your page to this,’ ” Parris said, adding, “If you’re bored, the kids are going to be bored.”

Central Region: Adrienne DeLuv Burrows, Young Women’s Preparatory Academy

Adrienne DeLuv Burrows’ story is not one of a model student who became a model teacher. Hers is one of redemption, a story that resonates and inspires students.

As a student at Miami Killian Senior High, Burrows wasn’t involved in clubs or sports. She had mostly C grades, except in the occasionally interesting elective class. Her SAT score was a total of 750 and she flunked out of Miami Dade College.

It wasn’t until she enrolled at Bethune-Cookman University, which she calls the “school of second chances,” years later. She got straight A’s for the first two years and graduated with a degree in English literature. Now she’s finishing up a master’s degree and eying teaching at the university level part-time.

“I use my story and experience to help my students be better, strive for greater,” said Burrows, 36. “That’s why the kids at Edison [Miami Edison Senior High] loved me so much, because I was relatable.”

Upon graduation, Burrows thought about law school but needed to make some money. Her family encouraged her to consider teaching, and she only submitted her resume — to Edison, a school on the brink of closure.

She wanted to show those students a better way. “People at that time had really given up on them, and I wasn’t going to do that as a teacher,” she said.

Now at Young Woman’s Prep, she molds seventh-graders and students in intensive reading into Advanced Placement Scholars.

“It’s the best feeling in the world,” she said of the nomination. “This is the biggest trophy, the biggest reward. I can’t even describe the joy of how I feel getting to this point.”

South Region: Oliver Diez, Palmetto Elementary School

Oliver Diez’s students master the entry-level musical instrument called a recorder before they fully know how to read.

The fundamentals of music are laid down in kindergarten. They’re introduced to the recorder in first grade. By second grade, they can join one of the many before- and after-school offerings at Palmetto Elementary: chorus, concert band, jazz combo, orchestra and drum line.

Many of his students, Diez says, stick with it. One of his students made it to Julliard, the renowned performing arts conservatory in New York City.

“Students come in sounding like a duck and leaving like a swan,” Diez, 43, wrote in his Teacher of the Year application.

Diez, the esteemed music teacher at Palmetto Elementary, has spent all of his two decades teaching at the Pinecrest elementary school, growing and running his program like a middle school music program. He helped launch a booster club, now a registered nonprofit, for travel expenses for performances. More than a third of the school’s students are involved in the program, the largest elementary band in South Florida..

Diez has stoked another passion. At a 2012 spring concert, he conducted in a Stormtrooper costume while his students played a six-minute “Star Wars” medley. He invited six characters from the 501st Legion, a Star Wars fan-based costume group that attends charity events, to surprise the students at the performance. Diez officially joined the group a year later.

Diez has much to look forward to beyond the Teacher of the Year ceremony. His fourth- and fifth-graders were invited to perform in March at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Palmetto Elementary is the only elementary school concert band on the bill.

“When I thought Carnegie Hall was going to be the highlight of my career, and then this came along,” he joked.

Alternative Education: Hope Grant, COPE Center North

Hope Grant calls her tenure in some of Miami-Dade’s toughest schools, “mission work.”

Her mission of being an educator began when she was 8, teaching the shrubs in her backyard as if they were students in her native Jamaica. Grant’s work eventually took her stateside, where she’s spent two decades out of a 33-year teaching career in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools system.

She was a fourth-grade teacher at Lillie C. Evans Elementary, then served as a literacy coach at Miami Norland Senior High and Miami Edison Senior High. But Grant wanted a change of pace, so she sent her resume to COPE Center North, a school for pregnant and new mothers.

“Some people are under the notion that if you go to COPE. it’s going to be easy, but it’s not easy under Ms. Grant,” said Grant, 58. “But I’ll sit with you and work with you, and I won’t release them unless you’re ready.”

Grant’s class is run like a regime: No cellphones, no food in class, no running late — although she does give extra credit for punctuality. She’s easier on new mothers who fall asleep during her lessons. As a mother of three and a grandmother to two, she can empathize.

“I tell the girls, ‘This is not the end for you. This is a new beginning. You have another pair of eyes,’ ” Grant said.

This story was originally published January 23, 2019 at 6:00 AM.