Students Travel to Charleston, S.C. with UNCA Teaching Fellows

Amanda Allgood, Rebecca Bedard, Spencer Bolejack, Melanie Currie, Jennifer Davis, Katrina Duffy, Sarah Gammons, Rebecca Guy, Evan Guyer, Christy Lusk, Shelly Moss, Nicholas Phillips, Holly Procita, Joshua Ray, Andrea Rhyne, Christy Scott, Traci Shell and Porscha Yount spent part of winter break visiting elementary schools in Charleston, S.C.  The students are part of the prestigious North Carolina Teaching Fellows program at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.

These 19 Fellows, along with University faculty, journeyed to Charleston to learn about education in a multicultural setting and to see innovative approaches to teaching.

"With the changing demographics of the United States, North Carolina teachers will experience more and more cultural diversity among their students," said Brenda Hopper, UNCA Teaching Fellows director. "By exposing our students to successful schools like the ones we visited, they will be better able to teach creatively and effectively within a multicultural environment."

In Charleston, the group visited Ashley River Elementary School, a creative arts magnet school emphasizing music, drama, and art. At Lambs Elementary and Memminger Elementary they saw schools administered using the "Accelerated Learning" approach which can create high teacher morale. After hours, the students sampled Lowcountry cooking and took a walking tour of Charleston.

From Charleston, they headed south to the Penn Center on St. Helena Island, S.C. The Quakers founded a school for freed slaves there during the Civil War; it remained a school for African Americans until the late 1940s. More recently it has been a retreat, conference center and museum of the history of African American Education and Gullah culture.

On the way home, the UNCA group detoured through Atlanta to visit the High Museum of Art and take in a performance of "Beauty and the Beast" at the Fox Theatre.

The North Carolina Teaching Fellows program is designed to attract the state’s best students to the field of classroom teaching. North Carolina high school seniors are eligible to apply for this $26,000 scholarship in the fall of their senior year. At UNCA, the scholarship funds nearly all college expenses, a trip each January to visit schools in a large American city and a special summer course in Cambridge, England. In return, recipients of the scholarship agree to teach in North Carolina schools for four years after graduation.

For more information about UNCA’s Teaching Fellows Program, call 828/251-6864 or visit their Web site.

Media Contacts:

• Brenda Hopper, UNCA Teaching Fellows Director, 828/251-6864
• Jill Yarnall, UNCA Public Information Assistant, 828/251-6526