Every moment can be a lesson for students!

I like to begin my posts with my purpose, my why.

I want to focus on my craft to be inspired and to inspire excellence in educators in order to cultivate and motivate inquisitive students through collaboration and positive conversations. 

This post is a little different than my previous posts. I finally had some time to reflect on the 2023-2024 school year, and boy was it a year to remember! This 2023-2024 school year will be memorable in so many ways! I learned so much from my amazing teammates AND students. I met an amazing cohort of teachers who quickly became friends. I can’t wait to start our Regional Teacher of the Year journey. During my year as Craven County Teacher of the Year I met some amazing people and educators who I am blessed to call friends. With all the wonderful things this year brought to my life, the most life changing was that I got to play TOP GUN in the back seat of an F-18. Please read this article I wrote for EDNC of how I used this opportunity to teach my students to reach for the stars!

EDNC article

You can also click on these links to watch the high performance climb and a short video of my experience.

High Performance Climb

Watch my adventure

You may be wondering how does this experience fit with my purpose and my why.  Making the decision to ride in the backseat of an F18 was not an easy decision.  I had to dig deep.  It took conversations with my family and a lot of praying. I want to inspire excellence in educators, I want to motivate students. If I can conquer my fears and do hard things, maybe I can motivate teachers and students to do hard things.

I would love to hear from you!  What hard thing did you do? How did you use that to motivate your students or your teachers? Please comment with your story!