Clay County Schools’ teachers of the year Brenda Cherry–Elementary Teacher of the Year

Clay County Schools’ teachers of the year

Brenda Cherry–Elementary Teacher of the Year

By Frank Bradley

Sentinel writer

You’ve got to hand it to Brenda Cherry. She’s been teaching kids who are struggling in school for years and years.

It doesn’t get any easier for her, but the kids get better and better. Her job is introducing youngsters to the world of fact and the world of make believe. To help them learn about life through books, to write their names, to help them cipher and to get along with other kids.

Brenda is the elementary school’s Remediation teacher, and she been teaching kids for 29 years. On Tuesday, I talked with her after I had learned she had been picked by her peers as the Elementary School Teacher of the Year–an honor well deserved.

With the recent cutbacks in state funding, Hayesville’s Elementary School only has one Remediation teacher, and that’s Brenda. She is responsible for helping kids who are having a tough time in their classrooms from grades Kindergarten to 4th Grade, although she tells me, mostly she has been working with children in Kindergarten, First and Second grades.

First Grade is really when kids learn to read, but for many it is a hard, hard time. Brenda says she works with four or five kids at a time encouraging, prompting, helping them learn new words, new reading skills.

She told me she has a table in the hallway because there just isn’t enough space available in the elementary school for her to have her own room.

“I could take them up to the middle school, but taking them back and forth eats up too much of my time that I need to be spending with them,” she told me.

She said it is hard to reach children who get way behind. That sometimes they feel it is too much of an effort to catch up.

“They require more individual effort,” she said.

In First Grade, kids learn their letters, word sounds, and they begin building their basic vocabulary. “I start them out in basic books,” she said. “I also try to find things, books they are interested in.”

She said kids in First Grade are eager to get into chapter books. “Mostly, they get into chapter books in the Second Grade,” she said. “KIds know chapter books are going to be harder, but often I find them really motivated to start reading  those chapters.”

In addition to teaching, Brenda is also president of the Clay County Chapter of the North Carolina Association of Educators. She said there are currently about 45 members, and they are concerned with teachers pay and benefits, all of which have been flat for several years.

Brenda and her husband J.C. Cherry have three girls: Gina, who is a Junior in Hayesville High School, and Emily and Megan, both student at Western Carolina University. Brenda said Emily, who is a Sophomore there plans to enter the nursing field. Megan, who is a Freshman, thinks she wants to pursue a degree in Finance and Accounting.