Mrs. Beasley earns love, respect, Teacher of the Year
Published: June 15, 2006
Never in her 24-year teaching career had Diana Beasley missed three straight days of school.
Not to have kids, because she hasn’t had any — her students, she says, are her children.
Not for illness, because she has been lucky that way.
But for a special event last week, the Hickory High School biology teacher took off Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. And yet even on Wednesday, she came into school around lunchtime — immediately after returning from Raleigh, where the night before she had been named North Carolina’s 2006 Teacher of the Year.
For Hickory High students and staff, it’s easy to see why Beasley, 45, was so honored.
In her 17 years at the school, she has earned love and respect for her creativity, good humor and high expectations, taking her position as a role model seriously. “I just think that if you expect it,” she said, “they’ll do it.”
When Beasley walked into school May 3, students cheered, and a sea of congratulatory Post-It notes blanketed her room, including one note four Post-Its long.
Her e-mail inbox was jammed with nearly 175 messages. And in the hallway above her door frame was a posterboard reading, “Congrats Diana — You deserve the best because you are the best. Big L.”
“If you want to see … somebody who really does know how to teach, it’s right there,” said Big L himself — Charles Lutterloh, an anatomy and biology teacher who has taught next door to Beasley for about 15 years. “It’s the epitome. It just took the state years to figure it out.”
Beasley has supported her students in and out of the classroom, attending proms, ballgames, concerts and plays, calling kids to tell them their test results, arriving early and leaving late to grade papers and provide extra help.
One night last semester, she nodded off in her room and was awoken by maintenance staff calling her over the building public address system, saying they’d noticed her car in the lot and wondered if she was still there.
“As you can see, my babies are my world,” she said after comforting a crying student this week.
Many students interviewed this week called her the best teacher they’ve ever had, the kind who gives a lot of work — and motivates you to do it.
“To tell you the truth, I didn’t really like science until I took her class,” junior Josh Johnson said. “She has ways of making it fun.”
“She teaches you how to think for yourself, and teaches more than you need to know — not just to pass the class, but to go on and succeed,” sophomore Erin Cheney said.
And in the process, she’s opened students’ eyes to the wonders of the living world.
“You don’t look at a flower the same way anymore,” said senior Chris Beeson, who took Beasley’s class two years ago and now serves as her teaching assistant. “Everything takes on new meaning.”
As teacher of the year, Beasley wins $7,500, a new Hyundai Elantra and the opportunity to take an international trip and attend several out-of-state conferences.
Starting July 1, she’ll take a year off from teaching and travel the state as an ambassador for education, and says her focus will be not only on children, but also teacher recruitment and retention and the importance of making connections with students, parents and communities.
The job is rewarding, but also demanding: Last year’s winner logged 156 nights in hotels, Beasley said.
Difficult as it will be for Beasley to be out of her classroom, what’s perhaps even harder is knowing she will never teach in it again. Her husband, Rick Beasley, left his job as Conover city manager earlier this year to take a post at his alma mater, Appalachian State University in Boone, and Diana Beasley had begun searching for jobs in Watauga County well before winning Teacher of the Year.
“Please don’t remind me of that,” said Lutterloh. “That’s the hardest thing. She and I have just agreed not to talk about it.”
So instead, her students and co-workers will enjoy her while they can.
“She truly is an educator who walks the walk,” Hickory High Principal Kim Mattox said. “Everyone is just so proud, but no one is surprised. Everyone is just so very happy for her because she is so deserving.”
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