Kyler Burke, Teacher and Coach

Mr. Burke is also the new girls high school basketball coach as well as new history teacher.

Meghan Sarge, Managing Web Editor

Mr. Kyler Burke is a new history teacher here at Pine Grove and for a rare situation, is also a Pine Grove alumni. He continued his life after high school when he graduated in 2012 and went to Lebanon Valley College and majored in history and minored in secondary education. His expectations for the school year are to get more involved with the district, community and to get to know everyone better. Mr. Burke grew up in Pine Grove and even had some of the current teachers employed here now as his teacher back when he was in high school. As of 2 years ago, Mr. Burke used to be a permanent substitute at Eastern Lebanon County High School and taught U.S. and World History. This previous year he was a substitute Schuylkill Haven and taught many different courses. The main course he taught World Tensions, but he also taught many others like world history, personal law, physiology and a few business classes. 

Mr. Burke saw this job opportunity as something that could be beneficial. “I graduated from here and I live in the community, so it kind of just made sense to take the job. I was also interested in the coaching position as well and since the coaching and teaching job opened at the same time, it just made perfect sense,” says Mr. Burke.   Mr. Burke mentions he liked a few of the teachers he had when he was a student at Pine Grove and that really impacted him to go into the career path he’s in today. “I knew I would always want to be a teacher. The teachers I had I really liked and I fell in love with education and it’s just where my heart was.” Mr. Barra who is a current history teacher and Mr. Fenley who was a previous math teacher here at Pine Grove had a huge impact on Mr. Burke and the career path he’s on today. 

New head coach Kyler Burke also explained some of his expectations and what he hopes to get out of this 2019-2020 basketball season as he has just been signed the new girls head coaching position. “I’m excited. The program has a lot of history and my parents were once involved with the girls program. My mom won a state title, and my dad used to coach. I’m really excited for this season, and im very passionate about basketball.” His expectations are to be competitive and rebuild the program. “You can never run the same system of plays. You have to look at the players that come out and adapt to their skill set. Defensively I’m big on help and team defense. Offensively im hoping to have 2 girls that play the post so we can run a high low defense but we might have all guards and will have to have all the girls around the perimeter. It just depends but we will see what we have and go from there.”