Meet the Chapel Hill educator who is now the 2021 North Carolina Teacher of the Year
Eugenia Floyd, who started her career as a teacher assistant before becoming an award-winning teacher in Chapel Hill, is now North Carolina’s Teacher of the Year.
Floyd, a fourth-grade teacher at Mary Scroggs Elementary School, was announced as the 2021 Burroughs Wellcome Fund North Carolina Teacher of the Year at a ceremony Friday at the Umstead Hotel in Cary.
Floyd said she would work with her fellow teachers across the state to promote issues such as ensuring better broadband access. She said how some children couldn’t go online during remote learning highlights gaps across the state.
“Being that we are on our way out of a pandemic, I think we have lots of work to do,” Floyd said in an interview Friday after winning the award. “I think the pandemic has exposed many inequities within our education, as well as others.
“We are hoping as a group to make sure we give light to that and also make sure that the students as well as the teachers are supported during this time.”
She had been among nine finalists for the award, along with Cecelia Sizoo-Roberson of Piedmont IB Middle School in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and Jeremy White of West Lake Preparatory Academy in Lincoln County.
“You found new ways to help the students you could no longer see in person,” State Superintendent Catherine Truitt said Friday. “You improvised by creating new methods for teaching and engaging students. Teachers and school leaders went to extraordinary lengths so that students could continue learning and growing.”
Setting high expectations for students
Floyd, 33, is a product of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school system. She was among the first students in the school district’s Head Start program to help preschool children. She later graduated from East Chapel Hill High School.
Floyd started her career as a teacher assistant at Morris Grove Elementary School in Chapel Hill, where her family and friends observed she was a natural educator. She went on to earn her teaching license from N.C. Central University in 2013 and began teaching fourth grade that year at Mary Scroggs Elementary.
While Floyd is grateful for her experiences growing up in the district, it also left a bad taste in her mouth how she felt some teachers had set low expectations for her because she was an African American student.
Now she make sures to set high expectations for all of her students.
“I’m a true believer that if we have an expectation and we give our students the tools that they can, in order to achieve that expectation, then they can meet us there every time,” Floyd said.
Floyd’s efforts go beyond the classroom, as she created a neighborhood tutoring project in the apartment complexes where some of her students live. She’d pack her car with a clipboard, math manipulatives, paper and pencils and meet students as they got off the bus and let them know that she was available to help them.
Her students have consistently exceeded high growth in both reading and math on state exams, according to Crystal Epps, the principal of Mary Scroggs.
Dealing with social issues in class
Teachers and students need to acknowledge racism and social issues, according to Floyd. She said teachers must understand their own biases, including any racial biases they have.
In her class, she teaches a unit on social issues. She has her students discuss their own experiences, such as bullying, an injustice they may have witnessed happening to others and broader societal issues such as racism and sexism.
“I think it’s important that our students understand that I teach in Chapel Hill, but our community is not limited to just Chapel Hill,” Floyd said. “There is a world outside of that and we have to understand that there are other children that don’t have the same things that we have. We have to make sure that our children have a wide range of perspectives.”
Truitt praised Floyd as a teacher who “believes in building a classroom community that is supportive of students’ diversity.”
Vying for national recognition
She was named the 2020-21 Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Teacher of the Year in June.
In December, Floyd was named the Teacher of the Year for the state’s north central region, which includes Wake, Durham, Orange, Johnston and Chatham counties. That announcement was made at a ceremony at Mary Scroggs, with a parade in the carpool circle awaiting her when Floyd came outside to be surprised with the news.
Floyd is the first North Carolina Teacher of the Year from the Triangle since 2008, when Cindi Rigsbee of the Orange County school system won. Rigsbee went on to become a National Teacher of the Year finalist.
Floyd will spend the next school year traveling the state as an ambassador for the teaching profession. Her prize package includes $8,500 in cash, a leased car, a foldable laptop computer and the opportunity to travel abroad in Africa.
She will also become an adviser to the State Board of Education.
This story was originally published April 9, 2021 at 2:25 PM with the headline "Meet the Chapel Hill educator who is now the 2021 North Carolina Teacher of the Year."
