Three Apple Valley teachers, teacher assistant win state awards
Hendersonville Times-News
“Team Fortitude,” a teaching team of three eighth-grade teachers, and a teacher assistant from Apple Valley Middle School have been recognized by the North Carolina Association for Middle Level Education for their outstanding performance in middle level education.
The team - Ashley Ruzich, Jessica Reid and Donna Sargent - earned the NCMLE’s “2021 Teaching Team to Watch” award. Teacher assistant Haley Tatham earned the “2021 School-Based Personnel to Watch” award from the association, according to a news release from Henderson County Public Schools.
The awards are given annually. The team award is given to a group of school-based professionals who routinely collaborate to effectively support the overall growth and development of middle school students. The personnel award is given to a support professional that goes above and beyond to enhance middle level education for stu
Ashley Ruzich, Jessica Reid and Donna Sargent have been named the NCMLE’s “2021 Teaching Team to Watch,” the award given annually to a group of school-based professionals who routinely collaborate to effectively support the overall growth and development of middle school students.
Principal Katelyn Davis describes Team Fortitude as “three phenomenal women who each have their own skills and strengths that create an education that is challenging, passionate, fun, entertaining, standard driven, thought-provoking, and engaging.”
Apple Valley’s current Teacher of the Year, Reid blends intensity and humor into her social studies lessons, which Davis says are hands-on and rich with literature and media from American history. “You know you are nearing Ms. Reid’s class if you start to hear students debating about historical artifacts,” Davis says. A former high school teacher, mathematics teacher Sargent has the end goal in mind, providing her students with honest feed