Richmond Senior High School student Laura Greene has always known she wants to be a teacher. Each day when she works with students at Washington Street Elementary School, she says she learns more and more about her future career choice. She’s well on her way to her goal, as she and six other students now wait to learn whether or not they will receive the prestigious North Carolina Teaching Fellows scholarships.

The students still in the running for the scholarships are Tom Cox, Laura Greene, Ricky Holden, Cameron Hunt, Ebony Littlejohn, Jon Johnson and Alyssa Reynolds, all seniors at RSHS. Each had final interviews at Campbell University. They will be notified sometime in March if they are recipients.

The students have spent months preparing for the final interviews. RSHS Teacher Recruitment Coordinator Trudy Watkins offers them a number of resources as they prepare.

Watkins hopes the interviewers will take notice of the passion she believes all of the students have for learning and teaching and what unique approach that each student has to offer.

“We practice and practice,” Watkins said, “I always encourage the students to share their experiences, what they have learned, and how they will use what they have learned in the way they teach.”

Watkins also encourages the students to think of teachers who have impacted or changed their lives or inspired them to become teachers. For Greene, that teacher is Marcia Lambeth, who at the time was a ninth grade English teacher at then Ellerbe Junior High.

That was a really tough year for me, my father had cancer, and she went above and beyond to help my family,” Greene said. “She’s inspired me to be a mentor for children, someone who is willing to go the extra mile to help students be successful.”

Greene began working with students during the fall semester as a teacher cadet. She opted to continue working with Melissa Staub’s fifth grade class into spring semester.

“This is my favorite part of the day. They are such a great group of students,” Greene said. “I really enjoy working with the students on their reading skills. I’ve learned that no two students learn in the same way. In working with them I know their strengths and weaknesses.”

The Teaching Fellows scholarship award is part of a concentrated effort to attract top students into teaching as a career. It offers $6,500.00 per year for a total of $26,000.00 with the recipient agreeing to teach in a public school in North Carolina for four years after graduating with licensure from college. Richmond Senior’s teacher recruitment program is one of the few high school programs left in the state. Since April of l987, one hundred twelve seniors at Richmond Senior High School have been offered the N.C. Teaching Fellows Award.