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Inside NHCS May 13, 2022

Special Edition: Educators of the Year

Melissa Allen: Elementary Educator of the Year

One of Melissa Allen’s students at Masonboro Elementary is nonverbal, and until last year communicated only by gesture and expression.

Now she works with him with a specially-formatted iPad that will voice what before was silent.

For 10 years his inner life and thoughts were locked inside of him.

Now thanks to his teacher, he plays games around the table with his peers and he’s as quick to “speak” with his device as his friends are with their voices.

It’s my turn.

I choose the blue piece.

Justin won.

Now it’s your turn.

Ms. Allen was a high school English teacher for years before realizing her passion was for special education.

Children who at the beginning of the year couldn’t hold a pencil are now writing sentences. Children who struggled with the structure and confines of a classroom are now independently checking their daily schedules, staying on task, learning and growing.

In her classroom, she said, it’s the gains that drive her.

“You always have something in each day that you’re cheering on your children for,” she said. “It’s not that that doesn’t happen in other classrooms, you just see it larger in here.”

The gains come because Ms. Allen is propelling them. A common refrain and redirect is "we're working."

If a child is gazing around the room during a reading lesson, a gentle hand-hold or tap of a worksheet comes with, “We’re working.” If someone gets rowdy during instruction, the reminder comes again, “We’re working.”

It’s part of building resilience to tasks that can feel monotonous, she said, and showing students that they can complete something that felt out of reach.

“Academics can be a struggle so we have to find their access point, and apply grade-level concepts at a level that’s accessible to them,” she said.

The same goes for social skills, she said.

Playing games teaches turn-taking, paying attention to others, patience. When they take those skills out into the world, it gives them access to the full human experience of connection, participation, joy, and assimilation.

“Ultimately that’s what we want them to do,” she said. “We want them to advocate for themselves and to generalize in society.”

Spending her days with her students brings her, above all else, joy. When those same students sometimes beg to stay in the classroom at the end of the day, she knows they feel the same way.

“They’re happy to be here,” she said, “and we're so happy they're here.”

Elizabeth Rappold: Middle School Educator of the Year

Middle school is a time of identity searching, where students on the cusp of adolescence suddenly have more freedom and opportunity to think about — and discover — who they are, said Elizabeth Rappold.

In her media center at Trask Middle School, she creates a space that is both comfortable and challenging, where exploration and refuge meld.

“They're just such unique personalities, and I love that they're really trying to figure out who they are,” she said. “It’s just really interesting to see what they're drawn to and want to explore. I try to make sure that everyone feels represented here, and that their interests are represented.”

On any given day you can find students choosing to hang out in the library during their free time to try coding or robotics or 3d printing, put together puzzles with friends and chat about their lives with Ms. Rappold, or to browse the curated collections of books she has around to entice them.

Teachers bring their classes in to collaborate and make use of Ms. Rappold’s extensive knowledge of middle school learning.

Her instruction, and the opportunities she provides, touch every student at that school.

She had been at Trask for 15 years as a teacher of language arts and social studies and an instructional coach when she took over the media coordinator position in early 2021.

“I love this school. Everybody always says you're crazy if you teach middle school, and maybe we all are a little bit,” she said with a laugh. “My number one thing is being at this school; I've never wanted to leave.”

While the scope of a school library has expanded over the years, she said, her passion for literacy still drives everything she does.

“A lot of the students who come in here every day would not describe themselves as avid readers, but I can get them in the space and get them engaged,” she said.

Conversations over time about what movies and TV shows they’re interested in, what their hobbies are, and where their passions lie lead to customized book recommendations from Ms. Rappold.

Which, in turn, lead to students checking out books for the first time, and reading for the joy of it.

Nothing makes her happier.

“I really, truly believe there's a book for every child. If you haven't found it, I'm gonna find it for you. And if we don’t have it here, I’m going to get it,” she said. “It's really important that we make sure we're giving students voice, we're listening to them, and we're responding to what they need.”

Secondary and Overall Educator of the Year: Stephen O'Neil

It was a personal catastrophe that brought Stephen O’Neil to a second career as a teacher.

He and his wife had just relocated from Southern California for a high-profile, high-pressure job in medical engineering. Six months after their move to Wilmington, his company went bankrupt and he was out of work.

He had been volunteering as assistant basketball coach at Ashley High School and the staff there knew about his engineering experience. When the previous Career and Technical Education teacher retired mid-year, Principal Pat McCarty was sure that Mr. O’Neil could fill those shoes.

“I had to find another way to make ends meet. I wasn't sure if teaching was a long-term solution,” he said, “but it quickly became one because I fell in love.”

It’s just more enjoyable to forge new relationships with students than to “push product” like he had been doing in the manufacturing world, he said.

But he also enjoys creating a supportive and exploratory space in the school for the kids who might not know that elsewhere — the pragmatic kids, the technical kids, the kids that get unique satisfaction from scale models and technical data sheets.

In other words, the future engineers.

Working together doesn’t always come naturally to his students, he said, but he models his classroom after the professional environment, putting them in teams where each student has a role that mirrors one in manufacturing.

“You don't work autonomously when you're an engineer; you're always going to be in a collaborative role,” he said. “What I really enjoy the most is the interactivity — they cross paths, they cross over into each other's realms, and they sometimes butt heads. And you know, that’s real life.”

His students said he treats them like professionals, and many of them plan to go on to careers in manufacturing and engineering. They’ve practiced it, and Mr. O’Neil has shown them what they're capable of.

When he was surprised by the announcement of being Secondary Teacher of the Year, he choked up.

His past engineering colleagues had questioned his decision to try teaching. You’re not making the most out of your background and education, they’d told him. Don’t settle.

“That mind-warps you a little bit at first, but then you realize, this isn't a concession in any way, shape, or form,” he said. “It's just a pivot.”

He thinks now on what he would have missed out on had the universe not thrown a wrench into his carefully engineered plans.

“It was meant to be,” he said. “I don't care what anyone has to say, at the end of the day, if you’re satisfied and it strikes your moral compass, there’s nothing that can replace it.”

Principal of the Year: Christopher Madden

When you follow Chris Madden down the hallways at Williston Middle School, you see fist after fist being raised by students to bump and greet him.

They like and respect him, and they’re willing to be vulnerable enough to let anybody see it.

Madden had Williston on his mind and heart for years. He applied for this job three times before getting it.

Middle school is not an academic holding time, he said. It’s a launchpad to success in high school and the rest of their lives.

“If you're teaching 11-, 12-, 13-, 14-year-olds and you're not worried about where they're going to be at 25, then you're doing them a disservice,” he said. “That's the big picture to me — not just what we do here, but where does this catapult them to?”

When he was a high school administrator in Pender County, he said, he could tell which kids were at risk of high school dropout within the first nine weeks of freshman year. They just weren’t prepared for the rigor and curriculum of high school. He’s not going to let that happen to students from Williston.

“I tell parents, ‘I want your child to like me, I want you to like me, I want to work together,” he said. “But if you have to dislike me in order for your kid to succeed, I'll take that.”

He knows the negative narrative in the community that sometimes gets shared about Williston, he said. It’s unfair to the students, the staff, the families, and the community that supports that school.

Since taking the helm in 2020, he’s been working to balance creating a safe, loving, comfortable environment with keeping expectations high.

Rigor and structure, he said, can happen within a framework of compassion.

“I'm very open and transparent about where we need to grow as a school and where we need to get better, because there's a lot of work to do,” he said. “With any school you go to, it's what you make of it. There's so many incredible things that happen everyday here that people don't talk about.”

Changing the culture, he said, starts with empowering students and their families to feel ownership in their school.

Families are taking notice. When his recognition was announced, one parent who said she had had “plenty of conversations” with Mr. Madden about her child, shared that she knows his door — and his mind — are always open.

“This man right here has definitely been putting in the work,” she said. “He is not putting on. He loves those kids unconditionally. I can attest to this.”

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