Laura Greenidge

Educator of the year



We go to school twelve plus years in our lifetime. In elementary school we only have one teacher, nut after that we see up to eight in a day. We go through teachers like socks, but we always have our favorite.

Going into my first of middle school I met Mr. Hampton, my social studies teacher. Every other teacher babied us and treated us like the young adults we were becoming because we were the runts of the school, but Mr. Hampton didn’t. I struggled at first in his class because he didn’t bother us if we had missing grades, if we didn’t turn it in, it became zero. His class required me to acquire studying habits, because if I didn’t, my grade would suffer. Thanks to him, now in high school I don’t struggle with studying because it’s a habit I’ve had under my belt for four years.

Mr. Hampton was also a very engaging teacher. Usually after a period of time, I will zone out of a long teaching lecture, the information being taught to me would go out one ear and out the other. Mr. Hampton had a way of teaching where not only was I interested, but I also retained the information. In a year of social studies, I learned more about history than I did in all the years prior combined.

Picking my educator of the year was not a difficult task. When you get the chance to have a teacher that understands what teaching techniques work and don’t work makes it very easy to pick. Mr. Hampton was not just a teacher to me, he was the teacher who sparked my enthusiasm to major in a history degree after I graduate.