Two teachers have been named as the 2018-19 Teachers of the Year. The Teacher of the Year finalists are chosen by a selection committee who review all campus teachers of the year and identify the top three candidates from elementary and secondary education. Each finalist then participates in an external interview process with professors from TWU who identify the top teacher.
The elementary Teacher of the Year is Heather Carson, a fourth grade teacher at Carol Holt Elementary.
Heather Carson teaches fourth grade math and science at Carol Holt Elementary. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Multidisciplinary Studies with a specialization in English as a Second Language from Texas Tech University. Her mission is to increase student engagement in the classroom by movement and extraordinary educational experiences. She stands true to her values by always putting her scholars first, building positive relationships with parents and scholars, amping up academic rigor, challenging her scholars to think beyond the standards, and always keep learning as an educator.
“She’s the kind of teacher you wish you had in elementary school,” said Thelma Foster, principal at Carol Holt. “The teachers admire her and respect her and I think they all want to be her when they grow up. I want to be Heather when I grow up.”
The secondary Teacher of the Year is David Roberson, the culinary arts teacher at Ben Barber Innovation Academy.
David L. Roberson was born and raised in Oklahoma City, OK. Sooner born and bred, Roberson is the youngest of eight children which helped develop his character as a person, chef and educator. He is a Culinary Arts instructor for grades 9-12 at Ben Barber Innovation Academy and is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Science degree in Christian Education with a concentration in Theology from Liberty University. Chef Roberson co-wrote the curriculum for Culinary Arts, which includes ProStart industry certification and Certificate of Achievement developing real world opportunities on and off campus.
“Not only does he love the students, which is very important, he loves the staff,” said Ben Barber principal, Catherine Hudgins. “He brings a bright light to us every day he is on campus.”
The use of drones—also known as unmanned aircraft systems (UAS)—is on the rise, and Mansfield ISD is starting a new class to help students prepare for the booming industry.
Edu-Drone will be offered in January 2019 with a focus on obtaining skills to become a commercial drone pilot for a variety of career pathways.
“It’s just such an exciting adventure for us,” said Christie Alfred, executive director of curriculum and instruction. “It allows students from all different interest areas to come in…and it’s potentially a huge opportunity for employment for them as they graduate high school.”
The classes will take place at Ben Barber Innovation Academy (BBIA) for MISD high school juniors and seniors.
Drones are also incorporated into the curriculum
at the Jerry Knight STEM Academy.
After successfully completing the course, students will be able to take the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Part 107 exam to become a certified drone pilot.
“We have drone clubs at some elementary schools. Also, at our STEM Academy, they’re very involved in the drone program and will soon have competitions. Those types of activities promote the pipeline for students to engage in the Edu-Drone class in the future,” Alfred continued.
Beverly Ver Steeg will be the instructor for Edu-Drone. She currently teaches engineering and aerospace classes at BBIA and is excited to expand the aviation offerings at the school.
“I actually fly drones at home and kind of play with them. It’s a hobby,” said Ver Steeg. “When we knew we were getting a class, I was like, ‘Yeah!’ and sort of pushed to teach the course.”
The 11th- and 12th-graders in Edu-Drone must have passed Algebra I, be at least 16 years old and hold a valid driver’s license.
There is still space in the class. Interested students can visit their counselor for more information on how to get enrolled.
There’s a reason why Savvy’s Bistro, located inside of Ben Barber Innovation Academy, is called food with educated taste. The restaurant is operated by high school students in the culinary arts program.
Savvy’s Bistro started more than ten years ago as a test kitchen for the aspiring chefs. Under the guidance of Chef Adair Smith, the eatery expanded to a place that is open to the public.
The restaurant will reopen for the 2017-18 school year on Tuesday, Oct. 17.
“My students have been preparing for this for a month-and-a-half, and they’re ready to go,” said the culinary teacher. “From the servers to the back of the house to the executive chefs, everybody’s ready to make sure we’re 100 percent on service and food.”
Savvy's Bistro also caters food for campus and district events.
New this year, patrons will get to enjoy a bigger and newly remodeled dining area. Another added feature is the ability to see students cook the food in an exhibition kitchen.
Students who work at Savvy's Bistro are certified ServSafe food handlers. They said it’s a great opportunity to experience the real world in a safe and nurturing environment.
“He doesn’t baby us. We make our mistakes, and we learn from them,” said Cecilia Harlen, senior at Frontier High School. “Instead of sitting in a classroom and watching videos on how to make something, we actually make it.”
Chef Smith said there are menu staples, but there are also new featured foods every two weeks. The featured foods on opening day will be spicy Cajun dishes.
“If you’re in the mood for some really tasty food, come on down to Savvy’s Bistro,” he added.
Savvy’s Bistro is open every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on school days. To view a menu and calendar, visit the restaurant’s webpage.
While Mansfield ISD is conducting a relief drive to help those affected by the destruction of Hurricane Harvey, high schoolers are making sure an often forgotten population is taken care of as well.
Ben Barber Innovation Academy students started a donation drive to collect food and supplies for displaced pets. The students in the agricultural science practicum class saw the need and spread their idea to their home high school campuses.
Through collaboration and the power of social media, the donations started to come in by the dozens.
“The schools were very receptive, and a lot of people were able to post it to their social media pages (using the hashtag #HeartsOutToHarvey). We’ve gotten a lot of shares. It’s been shared all the way into the U.K.,” said agricultural science teacher Kristi Chambliss.
Agricultural science students dropped off the decorated donation
boxes at each MISD high school.
Donation boxes were given to each high school. The items from each campus were carried into a trailer and brought back to the Reed Stewart Agricultural Science Center to store.
“We’ll be working with an organization that is going to take this to areas in the south that need it most,” Chambliss continued, “I’m so proud of these students because it was all their idea. They saw a need and had a heart for giving.”
The MISD rodeo team is also taking feed and hay to the Houston area to assist.
Senior Katelynn Timmerman added that the community has been a great help to their cause. They’ve even received discounts from local businesses to help offset the costs.
“We were using our own money to go help those animals. It feels really good helping,” she explained.
The campus pet drive ends Sept. 1. A community drive will take place on Saturday, Sept. 2 from 7 a.m. to noon at the Reed Stewart Agricultural Science Center, located at 1924 N. Main St., Mansfield, TX 76063. Anyone who would like to donate supplies is welcome.
MISD's FFA team prepared for the competition since January.
A group of 20 Mansfield ISD students who take great pride in their livestock can now say they have some of the best longhorns in the area, and they have the scholarship money to prove it.
The Autobahn Youth Scholarship Tour is an annual event in Fort Worth in which children and teens showcase their longhorn cattle. Organizers give out more than $400,000 in scholarship money to winners.
The five-day competition is much more than making sure the bovines have shiny coats. Contestants can also compete in various categories including public speaking, judging, agricultural mechanics, art and photography.
“I want my students to be really well-rounded individuals, so I tell them that they have to compete in certain categories,” said Kristi Chambliss, agricultural science teacher at Ben Barber Innovation Academy and sponsor for MISD’s FFA club. “If you want to be a pro in this industry, you have to be able to speak and write properly.”
Students from all over the Metroplex
showed off their cattle.
Diversifying the students’ talents paid off. The team raked in a club record of $56,998 in scholarships. In addition, three of the four all-around winners came from Mansfield ISD.
“My favorite part was seeing how happy the kids were when they heard their names being called for the awards,” Chambliss explained. “Our group also won the Herdsman Award for keeping our area the cleanest and working hard behind the scenes. It’s a big deal because showing is only a small part of what we do.”
This is the fourth year for MISD to compete in the Autobahn Youth Scholarship Tour. The students come for the competition, but leave with memories and lasting relationships.
“This is a major networking opportunity as well,” Chambliss continued. “They have common interests with other students and industry professionals. This can open the door to countless possibilities.”
It’s a summer of exploration for dozens of Mansfield ISD students going into grades 6-8. Ben Barber Innovation Academy’s (BBIA) annual Rising Star Discovery Camp is underway.
The camp is a fun introduction to a few courses offered at BBIA. Students are able to receive an interactive overview of topics ranging from culinary arts, video production, graphic design, criminal justice and computer maintenance.
Green helps a student troubleshoot a computer tower.
Instructor Jimmie Green, Sr. said he likes seeing the kids learn, and the learning is a mutual process.
“These kids are smart. I can teach them 1,000 things, and they can teach me 2,000,” he said. “We’re diagnosing, defragging; and by the end of it, we’ll have a race to see who can take a computer apart and put it back together the fastest.”
Camp coordinators work hard to make the courses mimic real-life situations.
In the criminal justice class, the students went outdoors to investigate a staged crime scene. Chris Vasquez, who previously worked with the Houston Police Department for 11 years, said it’s a way to give students a general idea of the policing world while creating positive experiences between the children and law enforcement.
“I went into teaching because I got tired of putting kids in jail and wanted to catch them before they get corrupted in the system,” he said. “They’re learning the steps of an investigation right now, which involves documenting and picking up evidence.”
Vasquez gives instructions on how to correctly document evidence.
The teachers said their goal is to spark an interest in the students that will hopefully have them coming back to BBIA to pursue their respective career paths when they enter high school.
“Once my curiosity was sparked in computer maintenance, there was no turning back for me, so I hope these kids find the same interest in a topic,” Green said.
BBIA’s Rising Star Discovery Camp runs June 12-16 from 8 a.m. to noon. The cost of registration is $65.
Walking through the halls of Ben Barber Innovation Academy (BBIA) and Frontier High School, you may see students operating a hand-built robot, filming a short film about the effects of coffee or even working on a full engine rebuild for a classic car.
Principal Cathy Hudgins is proud of not only the numerous choices her students have, but also what opportunities those choices open up for them.
"We offer a wide range of career classes here, but what is more impressive is that we offer over 70 different industry-level certifications within those courses," Hudgins said.
The availability of industry certifications or certificates aligns directly with one of the guiding statements found in the Mansfield ISD’s strategic plan, Vision 2020. Vision 2020 states that all students will graduate with 24 or more college hours and/or an industry certification or certificate.
In support of Vision 2020, Hudgins and her staff have been investigating more certifications that could be offered through the current courses at BBIA and Frontier High. They are excited to add many new options in the 2017-18 school year that will help students become more career-ready upon leaving high school.
A culinary arts student prepares to cook an entree at Savvy's Bistro,
BBIA's student-run restaurant.
One such certification is the ProStart Certification in Culinary Arts. Students working in the culinary arts department are currently required to obtain their ServSafe certification in food handling, but the ProStart Certification will be the first skills-based certification in this program of study.
"This certification will allow our students to walk into any restaurant in the United States and immediately get a heads up on everyone else," Hudgins continued. "This is a proven industry certification that shows they are at the highest level of skills and ability."
The Arts and Audio/Visual (AV) Department will begin to offer students the opportunity to get a certification in the video editing software Adobe Premiere CC. This is an editing platform that is used at local news stations, large media companies and major Hollywood studios.
Hudgins is also excited about a new certification that will be coming to BBIA's marketing program.
"We are bringing a new certification to our marketing department that is called School-Based Enterprise Certification," Hudgins explained. "As the students work through the student store, they will learn the backend of store management, marketing, pricing and more. That is all included in this certification."
Also included in this guiding statement from Vision 2020, students will graduate with 24 or more college hours. Frontier High School offers a program that can help students interested in the area of health science to get a head start on their college education. The Health Science Academy through Tarrant County College Trinity River East Campus (TREC) allows students to earn up to 48 hours of college credit before graduating high school. Students who complete all 48 hours will earn their associate degree before they walk the stage and receive their diploma.
"Earning certifications is a great way for students to measure their achievement in classes," Hudgins said. "It also gives them a leg up as they are trying to get into colleges or go into the workforce."
For more information about MISD’s Vision 2020, visit the district website.
A stage usually set up for musicals and performances was transformed into a construction workshop filled with tools and supplies to see which North Texas high school team would be named the best builders in the region.
“We were trying to come up with a fun preliminary contest prior to our SkillsUSA contest,” said Gene Schramme, construction technology teacher at Mansfield ISD’s Ben Barber Innovation Academy. “We brought the ‘Nailed It’ idea to the staff at the MISD Center for the Performing Arts, and they helped it all come together.”
Students used teamwork and skill to build their playhouses.
The teams of four from Ben Barber Innovation Academy, Birdville Center of Technology and Advanced Learning, Stephenville High School and Fort Worth’s Green B. Trimble Technical High School spent hours designing and building a playhouse that would be judged by a panel of industry professionals.
The inaugural contest wasn’t all about hands-on learning, though—it was also a way to give back to the community.
“I didn’t know these houses were going to Habitat for Humanity until two weeks ago,” said Jacob Dawson, high school junior and member of the Ben Barber Innovation Academy team. “It made it that much more important to do that job right.”
“The first thing I told [the teams] was, 'We want you to be safe, and we want you to have fun because we’re building these playhouses for kids.' At the end of the day, there are four families, and their kids are getting a playhouse,” said Schramme.
The MISD team was proud of their finished product.
After six intense hours of work, the judges made their final decision. MISD’s Jacob Dawson, Caleb Padgett, Logan Dawson and Hayden Zawodniak earned the coveted winner’s plaque. They were happy that their talents were recognized, but they were even happier to be helping a greater cause.
“About a month ago, we took a trip, and we helped Habitat for Humanity, and we got to meet a bunch of wonderful people,” said junior Caleb Padgett. “Now that we get to do these, it’s such an honor to be able to give those to families in need.”
DEWALT® Power Tools, Huckabee & Associates, Inc. and Upstage Center, Inc. were major sponsors of the Oct. 12 event.
Organizers hope the competition will expand to include even more area schools next year.
