News

Teacher of the Year honored at luncheon

David Jones congratulates Allyson Myers for being named Henderson County's Teacher of the Year.

By Lightning Staff, Published: May 2, 2012

Henderson County school leaders and fellow teachers recognized the teacher of the year,  Edneyville Elementary School second-grade teacher Allyson Myers, Wednesday during an awards luncheon at the at Hendersonville Country Club sponsored by SunTrust Bank.

Myers, a mother of six who also has taken in foster children, never seems to run out of time for children or exhaust her energy to focus on them.

"The thing that really makes her exceptional, as most of our teachers do, is she has high expectations," said schools superintendent David Jones, a native of the apple growing community where Myers teaches. "She loves the technology. In fact, board members recently visited and saw the second graders using technology. She's not only a teacher, she mentors a senior at Balfour."

Jones invited Dot Marlow, a longtime supporter of education, to join him in presenting Myers the award.

Myers told the large audience of fellow teachers, principals, past award winners, school administrators and School Board members that her experience as a mother, foster mother and teacher has proved to her that she is doing what she was meant to do.

Catherine Swift, student body president at West Henderson High School and a winner of the prestigious Morehead-Cain scholarship to UNC at Chapel Hill, read a story about a businessman named Mr. Vollmer who boasted about his perfect blueberry ice cream. He'd go out of business if he ran his ice cream factory like administrators run the schools, he told a teacher.

The teacher told him that he must have top quality ingredients, and the businessman responded that he did indeed. What does he do, she asked, with inferior berries that reach his loading dock? Why, he sends them back, he said.

"She jumped to her feet. 'That's right!' she barked, 'and we can never send back our blueberries. We take them big, small, rich, poor, gifted, exceptional, abused, frightened, confident, homeless, rude, and brilliant. We take them with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, junior rheumatoid arthritis, and English as their second language. We take them all! Every one! And that, Mr. Vollmer, is why it's not a business. It's school!"

"Teaching is a hard job," Swift said. Teachers have to teach but also mentor. "They have to be disciplinarians, counselors and sometimes friends," she said.

Exceptional teachers at Mountain Community School, Rugby Middle School and West Henderson High School, she noted, helped her achieve what she has. A middle school teacher recognized that she was making herself sick over homework. He told her, "If I turned in my homework the next day I would get a zero."

Stopped behind a school bus on her way to school Wednesday morning, she saw the bus pick up two young children "who ran onto that school bus with huge smiles on their faces, like it was Christmas morning." Good teachers instill that in children.

SunTrust awards $1,000 to the county teacher of the year. Myers was among the teachers of the year from the 23 Henderson County schools.

Other teachers of the year were:

Kathleen Abraham, Apple Valley Middle School.

Darcy Anders, Atkinson Elementary School.

Chris Eudy, Balfour School.

Lee Ann Wright, Bruce Drysdale Elementary School

Kelly Bailey, Clear Creek Elementary School.

Kristen Walter, Dana Elementary School.

Rick Martinez, Early College program at BRCC.

Rod Clark, East Henderson High School.

Allyson Myers, Edneyviille Elementary School.

Barbara Guinn, Etowah Elementary School.

Missy Miles, Flat Rock Middle School.

Sara Webb, Fletcher Elementary School.

Stephanie English, Glen Marlow Elementary School.

Amy Ramsey, Hendersonville Elementary School.

Alyson Gooch, Hendersonville High School.

Betsy Schneider, Hendersonville Middle School.

Debra Pridmore, Hillandale Elementary School.

Candace Young, Mills River Elementary School.

Dylan King, North Henderson High School.

Heather Denton, Rugby Middle School.

Katy Glaze, Sugarloaf Elementary School.

Tiffany Barnett, Upward Elementary School.

Amy Zalevskiy, West Henderson High School.

Come back to the HVL Lightning for more information and photos of the event.