The school district has newly implemented a program called TORCH to recognize teachers. The district communications specialist, Casey Rooman Smith, shines a light on how the acronym TORCH came to be.
“When they were working on their strategic plan they came up with TORCH to help remember the different steps of the strategic plan,” Smith said. “I think that it will work with everything that our district wants to work on and what it represents for us. [A torch is] part of our logo, and he just loved it, and we’ve just ran with it.”
The way the district goes about this is very unique and shines light on how many dedicated teachers there are in the district. The award aims to celebrate teachers’, such as social studies teacher Carter Sebasto, efforts in the classroom.
“Dr. Holder, Dr. Gibson and a few other people from the administration came in and they read why I am receiving the award,” Sebasto said. “It included standards that I hold in the classroom, my dedication to the craft of teaching and the amount of work and time that I put into my job here.”
There is both a physical and emotional factor to receiving the awards. Sebasto describes how he felt as he was presented with his award by the district.
“Teaching is a very demanding job, not only in terms of your time but your emotional battery,” Sebasto said. “You’ve got to be there emotionally for 40 kids a day, and so it felt rewarding to have someone say they see [that effort]. I felt a sense of relief and I felt a sense of gratitude for whoever nominated me and whoever would support my nomination and recognition.”
FACS teacher Lauren Stringer had a similar emotional reaction to winning her award.
“I was trying not to be emotional for my students,” Stringer said. “I felt very honored and shocked when I had a bunch of people in my room giving me the award so it was nice. I felt a lot of gratitude towards everyone.”
As of now, the winning teachers who get presented with this award are given it in front of their students, but this is not how it always was. Previously, the awards were given in front of the school board exclusively, but Smith feels that presenting the award in front of the students is better.
“Don’t get me wrong, the old way was fine, but the new way has been so much more meaningful because their students are seeing them be recognized and that’s a special thing,” Smith said.
Overall, the TORCH awards celebrate teachers in the district for going the extra mile. Although the awards are an honor, according to Smith, there is no shortage of teachers who deserve this honor.
“It’s a way to recognize staff members in our buildings who are going above and beyond,” Smith said. “We recognize two different schools a month, and a lot of our principals have a hard time because we’re very fortunate as a district. We have a lot of great teachers.”
