North Carolina teachers of the year, Bryan “Freebird” McKinney and Julie Pittman, will be presenting and inspiring students as well as the community on “Being Agents of Change.”
The talk is on Thursday, Feb. 28 at 9:30 a.m. in the University Center’s Grand Room.
McKinney was North Carolina’s 2018 teacher of the year, and Pittman was western North Carolina’s 2018 regional teacher of the year.
Director of the WCU Office of Field Experiences, Amanda Chapman, said that the upcoming talk will be about teachers inspiring and leading students even though their profession is not the “highest respected” or “the highest paid.”
The teacher of the year is a distinction reserved for exceptional educators in North Carolina. The Public Schools of North Carolina says that recipients need to be “dedicated and highly skilled,” and “proven capable of inspiring students of all backgrounds and abilities to learn.”
The process for choosing the teacher of the year starts at individual schools, which will nominate one teacher. Then nine teachers are chosen to represent each of North Carolina’s eight geographical regions with charter schools being collected together into a ninth region. A committee made up of educators, business and community leaders choose the teacher of the year from those nine regional teachers.
North Carolina first began nominating teachers of the year in 1970. Since then, three N.C. teachers won the national teacher of the year award. Four others have become National Finalists and one has been inducted into the National Teacher’s Hall of Fame.
