CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) RESOURCE CENTER Read More
Add To Favorites

Sarasota teacher, 51, dies of COVID-19 after falling ill before school year began

The Herald-Tribune - 8/25/2021

Aug. 26—Sarasota teacher Michelle Cook had a passion for helping struggling children and didn't let the pandemic stop her, taking time to deliver books and food to students last year while she was doing virtual instruction.

Cook tutored an autistic child who was nonverbal this summer, taught summer classes at a school for children with disabilities and previously spent time teaching at the Triad Alternative School, a place for children who have struggled elsewhere.

"The thing that made her so good at that is she's nonjudgmental, she's the most forgiving person and just had the ability to accept people and students where they were," said Cook's sister, Bethanne Bearden.

The leader of Cook's new school was eager to see that passion on display, but she never made it into the classroom this year. Cook fell ill with COVID-19 before school started on Aug. 10 and died at Sarasota Memorial Hospital Tuesday, after more than a week in the intensive care unit and six days on a ventilator.

Even as she struggled in the ICU, Cook wanted to help people. She posted on Facebook from the hospital urging people to take COVID-19 seriously.

"Don't be fooled into thinking your health is stronger than Covid — from a once healthy girl in day 5 covid icu, fighting to live," Cook wrote on Aug. 17.

Cook died a week later, leaving behind two grown children and a grieving family shocked by her swift decline. Bearden declined to discuss Cook's vaccination status, but said she was a healthy person.

"For her there's nothing to indicate she would have struggled with this terrible virus," Bearden said.

"She was a healthy, beautiful, 51-year-old," Bearden said, adding: "It's a real virus affecting real people and Michelle would tell people to protect themselves."

A native of Batavia, New York, Cook moved to Sarasota County as a child. The family lived in North Port and Cook attended church and school in Englewood before graduating from a Christian high school in Sarasota, Bearden said.

After attending Liberty University for two years, Cook graduated from Clearwater Christian College and embarked on a teaching career that spanned more than 20 years.

Cook was known for elaborately decorating her classrooms, something the leader of her new school was looking forward to.

"They said she had amazing themes she would use," Suncoast School for Innovative Studies Executive Director Sherika Evans said of Cook.

This school year would have been Cook's first at Suncoast School for Innovative Studies, a charter school that opened in 1999. She accepted a position teaching fifth grade. She worked at Booker Middle School last year, Oak Park School over the summer and had taught at other schools in the region, mostly charter schools.

Cook was in her classroom earlier this month working on getting it set up, Evans said, but she started to feel sick, didn't attend the school's meet-the-teacher event and hadn't been on campus since the week before school started.

Suncoast staff didn't get to know Cook, but after speaking with Cook's mother, Evans believes the best way to honor the teacher is to try to make this school year a great one.

"She reiterated how much her daughter loved teaching, how much she just really wanted kids to be successful ..." Evans said of Cook's mother. "I told my staff one of the best ways we can honor her is to make sure we do our jobs and inspire kids to read and be successful."

Despite not knowing Cook, Evans said "her impact is felt, her loss is felt, it's just a really tough time."

"She had a reputation that preceded her for being an amazing teacher, able to reach any student and form a relationship," Evans said.

Bearden said Cook loved to walk on the beach, even during red tide, and take sunset pictures, but teaching was her focus.

"Her life literally revolved around what she could do for her students," Bearden said.

Cook's struggle with COVID-19 was a "nightmare," Bearden said, but the family believes she is in a better place.

"We have no doubt that she's spending eternity with the Lord," Bearden said. "I would say above anything she would want people to know that she loved Jesus and then after Jesus she loved her students."

___

(c)2021 Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Fla.

Visit Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Fla. at www.heraldtribune.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.