Rhonda Waters has been teaching for 16 years, including 14 at Milton, but her original plan wasn’t to go into that profession.

The bassoon is a notoriously difficult instrument to learn; it requires all 10 fingers, including the thumbs, has a complicated fingering system that allows a wide variety of tones, and uses a temperamental double-reed at the mouthpiece.

Jessica Booher earned a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology – the study of physical movement – in 2009 from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, but after working for several years as a health fitness specialist, she decided to exercise her college minor, psychology. She earned a Master of Education degree in school counseling from Liberty University in 2016.

Carla Rials has sort of come full circle at SS Dixon Primary.

She attended school here as a child. Her son went through school here as well. And now, she’s the teacher of the year here.

Bethany Holley is from the area and did her student teaching at SS Dixon Intermediate School. She then landed a job there out of college and has been at the school ever since.

This is year No. 25 for Holley and it’s been a special one so far as she was recently named the school’s teacher of the year.

For Haley Fender, Rhodes Elementary School’s 2023 Teacher of Year selection, being a teacher was never a question.

“My mom has stories of me pretending to (be a) teacher with my little sister like sitting her down with stuffed animals and pretending to read a book,” Fender said. “Its just kind of what I always wanted to do. There was never a lightbulb moment.”

George Starkie took a roundabout road to the classroom, but Avalon Middle School’s Teacher of the Year is finally right where he belongs.

West Des Moines, IA – Nov. 10, Mediacom Communications is offering $60,000 in scholarship support for high school seniors who plan to obtain further education. The scholarship program is in its 23rd consecutive year and Mediacom’s investment will award $1,000 World Class Scholarships to 60 high school seniors. 

When Regina Clapper, Wallace Lake K8’s media specialist and librarian, describes what it was like finding out she was the first teacher of the year in the new school’s history, she needs only two words.

At a time when the news media is reporting record numbers of teachers leaving education, Lauren Hinote chose to trade her career as an insurance agent for the classroom.

It’s worked out so far; earlier this year, her peers chose her as Chumuckla Elementary School’s Teacher of the Year. The first-grade teacher blames her sister, Ashley Drinkard, a third-grade teacher at S.S. Dixon Intermediate School.