Biology teacher at East Forsyth chosen as Teacher of the Year

By Kim Underwood: Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools

Allison Weavil, who teaches biology at East Forsyth High School, is the 2016-17 Teacher of the Year for Winton-Salem/Forsyth County Schools.

Weavil has a gift for making learning fun, her students say, and she cares about them as people.

“She has a passion for learning that no other teacher has,” said sophomore MacKenzie Smoak. “She makes biology learnable and so much fun…She is hilarious.”

If Weavil thinks that standing up on top of a desk and becoming a tree will help her students understand photosynthesis, she will do it. What matters is keeping students engaged, Weavil said. “I do not hesitate to make a fool of myself if students are learning.”

Her students appreciate that effort. “She always explained things really, really well,” said sophomore Aryn Young.

“She makes learning in the classroom extremely fun,” said freshman Alexi Muse.

On Thursday morning, Superintendent Beverley Emory, Principal Rodney Bass and others surprised Weavil in her classroom. When Emory said, “This is our 2016-17 Teacher of the Year,” Weavil said she was truly surprised.

“I don’t think this is a surprise to anybody else,” said Emory, who went on to talk about how much students, teachers and others respect her and appreciate what she does.

She’s an outstanding teacher, Bass said. She has a great rapport with students and she teaches “from bell to bell.”

As the school system’s Principal of the Year, Rusty Hall, who is the principal at Old Town Elementary, served on the selection committee. When he dropped by her class to observe one day, he discovered just how engaging she is as a teacher.

“I found myself transported back to being a student, and I wanted to take notes and participate in her class,” he said.

Cindy Neugent, who is an administrative assistant in the front office, also knows Weavil as a parent. Her sophomore son, Alec, is one of Weavil’s students.  “She is awesome in her teaching abilities,” Neugent said. “She has been so willing to tutor and to go the extra mile.”

After talking about Weavil’s kindness to everyone and concern for her students, front-office secretary Betty Ann Brandis brought up her gift for coming up with innovative solutions. Buying kits that test Ph costs money that isn’t always available. “Yesterday she boiled cabbage in a crock pot,” Brandis said. “She made her own Ph solution.”

“You never know when a knowledge of biology might serve you,” Weavil said. “It might be when you’re planting seeds in a garden or sitting on a jury listening to a lawyer present DNA evidence.”

Weavil grew up in Gilbert, a small town in South Carolina. “It didn’t even have a stoplight when I was growing up,” she said. “It does now.”

She comes from a family of educators. Aunts were teachers. Cousins grew up to become teachers. Her mother, Diane Jumper, was a teacher who became an assistant principal. So she often thought about becoming a teacher herself. It was in high school, though, that three teachers – Valerie Waites, Nancy Bickley and Sandra Strange – inspired her to get serious about following that path.

“They taught me what it means to be a good teacher,” Weavil said. “They inspired not just me but all of their students to work and love learning.”

Having become a teacher, Weavil believes she found her calling. “I’m a woman of faith, and I believe we all have a calling – something we are supposed to fulfill in our lives,” she said. “I am meant to be a teacher, and I have been given an opportunity to do that.”

Weavil started teaching with WSFCS in 1999, just after she and her husband, Jeff, married. Jeff was already working in the area, and that August she took her first teaching job at West Forsyth High School.

When Weavil started teaching at West, fellow biology teacher Judy Felder served as her mentor. Her respect for her students, her passion for teaching and her ability to work well with others were evident from the start, Felder said. “She loves her students, she loves what she does, she is a great co-worker.”

While Weavil was at West, she earned her master’s degree in education at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2006. Weavil was the Teacher of the Year at West in 2007, and, in 2010, she became the chair of the science department. She taught at West until 2013 when she went to East Forsyth.

Trish Gainey, who is now the school system’s Executive Principal for Leadership Development, was the principal of East at the time. “She truly tries to make a connection with every child in her classroom and goes above and beyond in finding a way to connect with a student,” Gainey said.

Once, when Weavil was having trouble finding a way to connect with a student, Gainey said, she approached a coach who worked with the student and asked for advice. The coach was helpful and Weavil was able to make a solid connection with the student.

“She cares so much about her students, not just what goes on in the classroom,” said sophomore Sierra Dillard.

Jeff Weavil appreciates just what a wonderful person and teacher his wife is. “She cares not only about helping them learn but helping them grow as young people. She is dedicated. She is loyal.”

Their daughter, Grayson, is a sixth-grader at Hanes Magnet School. “She is just amazing, and she is always there for me,” Grayson sad. “I know that I can count on her. She has so much enthusiasm for students.” Her mother’s sense of humor comes home with her at the end of the day. “She tells corny jokes; she will dance around in the kitchen,” Grayson said.

The family goes to Glenn View Baptist Church in Kernersville. There, she has been a Sunday School teacher, served on church committees, and, inspired by her daughter’s question about what to do when they saw a homeless person holding a sign, established Bags of Hope ministry. Church members pack gallon-sized zip-lock bags with cans of beans, cups of applesauce and other food that doesn’t have to be cooked, along with toiletries and other necessities to give to people who are homeless.

When Weavil has time to call her own, she likes to read – Pat Conroy is at the top her list – and to cook. She also enjoys traveling. She particularly enjoys cruises.

If Weavil could change one thing about education, it would be to get people to understand how important it is to provide more money for education so that teachers can be paid what they should be paid, so that programs such as the N.C. Teaching Fellows can be restored and so that enough teacher assistants can be hired to serve students in the lower grades. In conjunction with that, she would like to see people working to elect people who understand that.

As the celebration was breaking up and people were returning to their regular duties, Julie Riggins, who teaches math at East Forsyth, came over to tell Weavil that she hopes that the honor will help Weavil understand just how great a teacher she is. “You are so humble,” Riggins said. “It validates you as a teacher. You don’t give yourself enough credit. You need this to tell you that you are great.”

As teacher Amanda Frederico put it, “Her heart is engulfed with her students. She only wants the absolute best for all of her kids all of the time.”

As Weavil sees it, she is just one of many, many teachers who are working hard to do their best for their students. And, for her, this honor is for everyone at East.

“East Forsyth High is a family,” she said. “When I look at this award, I look on it as an award for the entire school. We work together for the needs of our students.”

By Staff

The end of each school year brings lots of standardized tests. And to make sure that all goes as smoothly as possible, the school system needs volunteers to serve as proctors.

A proctor’s primarily responsibility is to work with test administrators to make sure that everything is done in a fair and uniform way.

This year, proctors are needed from May 27 through June 10.

“Every year, schools struggle with making sure they have enough proctors set up for test administrators,” said Dana Wrights, the chief program officer for accountability services. “The earlier the schools can get that planned, the better.”

Hundreds of proctors are needed. Although most standardized tests are given to groups of students, some students’ special needs mean that, in some cases, a test might be administered to a single student. Testing sessions can vary from 200 for an elementary school, to around 500 for a middle or high school. That means most schools need from 25-50 proctors to be able to administer tests. There are 81 schools in the district serving 54,000 students.

“There is not going to be a school that won’t need proctors,” Wrights said.

The proctors are needed because, like other states, North Carolina requires that another adult be in the classroom with the teacher when a standardized test is given. Proctors receive training, which is required, as part of the state’s efforts to make sure that everything is done fairly. The training is basic and essentially provides guidelines such as proctors cannot help students with questions or do anything that might suggest to a student that he might want to reconsider an answer.

“It’s an important job,” Wrights said.

In addition to monitoring testing sessions, proctors assist in dealing with situations that come up such as a child becoming sick or needing to go to the bathroom.

Although many proctors are relatives (parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles) of children who attend the school or adults who teach at the school, that is not a requirement. At some schools, churches and community organizations regularly supply proctors.

“You don’t have to be connected to the school – just a responsible adult over 18 who would like to volunteer some time to a neighborhood school,” Wrights said.

Additional information for potential Proctors:

• A testing session might last from two to four hours.
• Although each school needs proctors for a number of days, people can volunteer for one day only.
• Before volunteering, proctors receive the training and often the training is done in conjunction with the first session as a volunteer.
• Proctors need to be at least 18 years old. Because public school students cannot be proctors, high school students aren’t eligible even if they are 18.
• People don’t serve as proctors in classes where they have relatives.
• While serving as a proctor, volunteers are required to turn off their cell phones and other electronic devices.
• People with limited mobility are welcome to volunteer as proctors as long as they can move around a classroom. Someone who uses wheelchair could serve outside of a classroom as a hall monitor.

People who would like to volunteer as a proctor should get in touch with the testing coordinator at the school where they want to help. For an interactive map of all schools in the district as well as a list of schools with contact information, click HERE .

By Staff

In April of 2014, as part of a learning experience about the Gulf Stream, Paul McManus and other students in Ms. Susan Schambach’s class wrote notes, sealed them in 13 wine bottles and worked with Captain Ken Upton from Wilmington to place the bottles in the Atlantic Ocean approximately 40 miles off the coast of North Carolina.

The bottle contained a note from Paul (now nine years old) and was discovered by nine-year-old Mélina Couvreur of Verton, France, on the Beach of Berck sur mer, North of France. Mélina’s discovery made the local media in France and the young lady’s family contacted Mrs. Schambach at Summit.

For the past three years Triad Academy at Summit School second graders have released drift bottles into the Gulf Stream off the coast of Wilmington, North Carolina. The fourth set of bottles (ten of them) will be released during students’ spring break in April 2016. The Drift Bottle Project is part of Oceans Unit study to emphasize the track of the Gulf Stream and how close it comes to the coastline of North Carolina.

Each student fills a glass wine bottle with a letter from the class, contact information, a return postcard and a Summit School pen. The bottles are sealed with a ring of bright red duct tape around the top. Thirty-four bottles have been released during the past three years. Much of the success of the project hinges on Captain Ken Upton of Gamekeeper Sportfishing in Wrightsville Beach, who deploys the bottles into the Gulf Stream approximately off our coast.