Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Franklin Co., Roanoke honor top teachers
Click the button above to see all of our community coverage, or go straight to your community's homepage with the menu below.
More education stories
- Glenvar High School: Volunteers show they care
- Roanoke teachers want to lose to win
- Accolades for after-school at Grandin Court Elementary
- Actor helps provide moment in spotlight
- Roanoke Adolescent Health Partnership: Clinic treats teens for free
Archive
Stephanie Doyle, a sixth-grade U.S. history teacher at Breckinridge Middle School, is the 2008 Roanoke teacher of the year.
Doyle was selected among 17 finalists during ceremonies at the Hotel Roanoke and the Jefferson Center on Monday evening that featured speeches, a reception, dinner, singing students, limousine rides and a $1,000 check.
"It was very exciting. I almost started to cry," said Doyle, 31. "It's very moving to be recognized for what you do and for the hard work you put into it."
Earlier this year, Doyle was named a finalist for the McGlothlin Award, a $25,000 prize bestowed annually by the McGlothlin Foundation and Blue Ridge PBS.
"It was started off with my former principal, Asia Jones, asking me to apply for the McGlothlin and then it just sort of snowballed from there," she said.
Tracey Anderson, Breckinridge's current principal, called Doyle "a vital asset" to the school.
Doyle said she avoids teaching history from a textbook, preferring to get her students out of their seats to look at artifacts and documents.
"If they're going to remember it, if they're going to retain it, you have to experience it," she said. "History is not a bunch of dead people from the past. It's a story from our past which influences our present and our future. They [students] can see cause-and-effect relationships."
A graduate of Virginia Western Community College and Roanoke College, Doyle has been a teacher for eight years, all of them spent in Roanoke schools. She's also Breckinridge's sixth-grade team leader and on the school's leadership committee. And she finds time to mentor minority female students at the school through a program called GROW, Girls Rising Onto Womanhood.
"My whole goal is to help them through the bumps on the road to adolescence and to try to get them into high school and to programs that can help them move into college," she said.
n n n
Meanwhile, Franklin County's teacher of the year prize went to a journalist/musician/karate instructor turned high school teacher.
David Campbell, who teaches at the Gereau Center for Applied Technology and Career Exploration, won the 2008 prize after being selected from among 17 nominees.
Nominees submitted an application and an essay to the school system.
Campbell teaches media classes at Gereau, which he describes as "a hands-on kind of class where what we do is geared toward putting out our school publication."
The class puts out a news magazine that students produce from start to finish. They write, take pictures, edit, lay out the pages, staple the publication together and distribute it.
"They get the complete process," he said.
At 43, Campbell is only in his fourth year of teaching. After graduating from Franklin County schools, he set out for Missouri, where he earned a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri in Columbia. There followed a period of drift.
"I worked as a journalist, a baker, dish washer, retail manager, professional musician and karate instructor," he wrote in his application.
That last job, as a karate instructor at Washington University in St. Louis, was a revelation for him.
"I found out I just loved teaching," he said. "I loved transmitting information."
About eight years ago, Campbell and his wife moved back to Franklin County. He got a teaching certificate and seems to have settled into his vocation. He and his wife have also been building a house on their land.
"It's one of those things where we cut the timber off our land and we hand-hewed it," he said. "It's been an eight-year project so far. We're really not looking to move anywhere else."
