Wayne sees largest crop of teaching scholarships
By Phyllis Moore
Published in News on April 30, 2004 2:03 PM
Wayne County public schools had a record number of students selected this year as recipients of the North Carolina Teaching Fellows Scholarship.
Fourteen students representing all six county high schools and one alternate were chosen for the award, which pays for four years of college on the condition that the student returns to the state to teach.
The school district's 2004 Teaching Fellows recipients are as follows:
*Paige Keith Stewart and Jennifer Faye Williamson from Charles B. Aycock High School. Rebecca Amme Phillips was selected as an alternate and could eventually receive a scholarship.
*Angelina Louise Lugo and Sara Megan Strickland from Eastern Wayne High School.
*Amber Desiree Jacobs and Shannon Nicole Jones from Goldsboro High School.
*Stacy Lee Ellis, Regina Leigh Everett, Jonathan Christian Green, Troy Issac Smith and Helen Nicole Strawn from Rosewood High School.
*Jocelyn Jermese Bass and Deanna Rebecca Massey from Southern Wayne High School.
*Karena Barnes from Spring Creek High School.
Each Teaching Fellow receives a $26,000 scholarship loan from the state, payable in $6,500 annual increments. The full loan is forgiven after the Fellow has completed four years of teaching in North Carolina public schools. In addition, all Fellows take part in an academic and summer enrichment programs during their college careers.
"We are proud of the students selected as North Carolina Teaching Fellows and their desire to choose teaching as a profession," said Dr. Steven Taylor, superintendent of the Wayne County public schools.
"These students exemplify the attributes needed to become excellent educators. We look forward to these future teachers coming back as Wayne County public school teachers in four years or less."
Wayne County public schools employs more than 20 teachers who were a part of the teaching fellows program.
Debbie Durham, lead teacher for the school system, said, "We're very excited over the fact that almost 50 percent of the applicants from Wayne County were selected as teaching fellows recipients this year. We anxiously anticipate bringing Wayne County's best and brightest students home as future classroom teachers."
The teaching fellows program, created by the General Assembly in 1986 upon the recommendation of the Public School Forum of North Carolina, remains one of the top teacher recruiting programs in the nation.
The main focus of the program is to attract talented high school seniors to become public school teachers in the state of North Carolina, said Sally Pope, the school district's coordinator of the program.