(Salisbury, Md) - A Teacher from Bennett Middle School has been named Wicomico County Teacher of the Year.
Christy Briggs, a 6th-Grade English Language Arts teacher at Bennett Middle School who has a passion for literacy and a strong belief in her own responsibility to model lifelong learning, was honored as the 2016-2017 Wicomico Teacher of the Year Thursday March 17, 2016 at the annual Wicomico Teacher of the Year Banquet at the Commons at Salisbury University.
The new Teacher of the Year runs a student book club at Bennett Middle, mentors aspiring teachers in her classroom, helps lead her school's faith-based partnership with Oak Ridge Baptist Church (including a schoolwide carnival and a Hope for the Holidays outreach program), and is active in state and local reading councils. A 19-year teacher who is National Board Certified in Early/Middle Childhood Reading/Language Arts, Briggs has long been recognized and appreciated as an outstanding educator. In recent years she has been a Teacher of the Year finalist twice, a semifinalist twice, and now the 2016-2017 Wicomico Teacher of the Year.
"What I love about teaching is I get to make history every single day," Briggs said during her semifinalist video interview. "I get to make mistakes, I get to learn from my mistakes, and I get to show my students that I do this so they can see that as something they will be doing for the rest of their lives. I love that I get to introduce new authors and genres to students. I love that I get to see their passion about reading develop and grow. I love that they find me years later and tell me that they're still reading, or that they loved my class, or that they're writing something and they're enjoying it. I love that I hear from my students' parents on a regular basis about how I've impacted their child's life."
The new Teacher of the Year will begin her year in style, arriving at Bennett Middle School at 9:15 a.m. Friday chauffeured in a classic 1949 Buick provided for the occasion by Wicomico music teacher and auto enthusiast Buck Burton. She will be featured, along with this year's three finalists and 22 semifinalists, in a Wicomico Schools' Teacher of the Year special airing soon on PAC 14.
Briggs is a 1991 graduate of Parkside High School, and is part of a family committed to public education in Wicomico County. In this generation alone: Her husband, Brian Briggs, is an assistant principal at Wicomico Middle School. Her sister-in-law, Kristen Briggs, is an elementary TAD (Thinking and Doing) teacher married to Brian's brother, Frederick "Rick" Briggs, the principal of Mardela Middle and High.
Briggs received a bachelor's degree in elementary education from Salisbury University in 1995, and her Masters of Education in Reading from SU in 2001. She has been an educator in Wicomico County Public Schools since 1997, teaching at Prince Street Elementary (1997-2007), Fruitland Intermediate (2007-2014), and Bennett Middle (2014-present). Briggs enjoys both participating in and delivering professional development on the craft of teaching.
