The 2017 North Carolina Teacher of the Year will make a stop at Brevard College Tuesday, March 21, to address the importance of experiential teaching and learning in the 21st century. The free event begins at 7 p.m. in The Porter Center for Performing Arts’ Francis Pavilion and is open to the public.
“Bobbie Cavnar courageously speaks truth to power about the teaching profession and our public schools,” said Betsy Burrows, director of the Teacher Education Program at Brevard.
Cavnar is the 2016 – 2017 Burroughs Welcome Fund North Carolina Teacher of the Year. He teaches Advanced Placement Literature and chairs the English Department at South Point High School in Gaston County.Cavnar frequently conducts local and state-level workshops and begins every school year by providing beginning teachers in his district a tour of his Model Classroom. He is a Time-Warner Cable “Star Teacher,” a North Carolina State University “Inspirational Teacher,” a Gaston County and Southwest Region Teacher of the Year, and has five times been voted “Most Influential Educator” by the students of South Point High School.
Key Issues in Cavnar’s platform include public education as a civic good, public education and the promise of equal opportunity, the need to re-professionalize the occupation of education, recruitment and retention of teachers, the role of humanities in public schools, measuring growth in English, the negative outcomes of standardization in education, and the re-segregating effects of the “school choice” movement.
“Mr. Cavnar’s platform centers around the opportunity of a free, public, and equal education offered to all Americans being not only fundamental to the success of our society but also the keeping of a historical promise made in the founding documents of our nation,” according to his website.