Everything you need for a successful school year

Lit From Within: Heritage High Goes Back to School

Sunlight streams through the upper windows, flooding the central hallway. Appropriately dubbed “Main Street,” this corridor is the primary lifeline of the newly opened Heritage High School (HHS). It’s grand, expansive, and, most importantly, brand new.

“It looks new; it feels new; it smells new, and it sounds new,” Head Principal Tim Beatty said. “Because of the layout of the building and the technology that our students will be exposed to, the new building should be a game changer for our staff and school community.”

So, how much of a “game changer” can one building be, you may ask? That all depends on how the building came to be and why.

A HISTORY OF LIMITATIONS
“Poor lighting, leaking after rain storms, freezing or suffocating temperatures, narrow hallways, five [congested] floors—” these are “just a few” of the problems that plagued their old building according to Michele Wisskirchen, an alumna and now HHS teacher.

As teachers, “we worry about our students not being safe, not having the access to technology, or not being comfortable as they learn,” Wisskirchen explains. “It’s hard for them to take an SOL test with sweat pouring down their faces.”

“Limited” is how teacher and alumni Alex Drumheller describes education in the old building.

In fact, at Drumheller’s HHS graduation ceremony in 1987 the temperature was higher than 90 degrees when a storm broke and led to rain water pouring through the gymnasium roof.

Ben Copeland summarizes it this way: “This building is new, warm, inviting and bright versus what was old, dark, dingy and leaky.” As the Assistant Superintendent of Operations and Administration for Lynchburg City Schools, Copeland has been leading this project since August 2012.

To arrive at this fresh start, Herculean efforts were required. Input was gathered from “teachers, parents, students, community [members], City Council and the School Board,” Wisskirchen recalls. All of these people were “gathering together, throwing out ideas of what we wanted and needed on endless sticky notes.” Those ideas were distilled to trends then themes and—finally—a design.

Standing in the new building today, Copeland says, “It’s been my major project, and I’m thrilled. I think it could change the student culture.”

Perhaps, even be a game changer.

A CLEAN SLATE
Upon entering “Main Street,” you see soaring, open ceilings, wide walkways, and light, lots of natural light. In fact, “natural” describes the aesthetics all around. Brick, natural wood and burnished concrete floors compose the majority of spaces, creating a warm space more reminiscent of an attractive college campus than a traditional high school. But, after walking a bit, you start to notice the total absence of lockers.

Instead of lining the hallways, lockers are housed in four bays strategically placed around the building. Designed to prevent hallway congestion, they allow students to stop at their lockers without interrupting the flow of foot traffic because they’re anchored at three-way intersections with hallways leading off of them. The bays are also adjacent to staircases and entrances feeding in from the bus drop off zone.

The search for natural light—a priority for everyone—led to this unique building layout according to Copeland. Gone is the double-loaded corridor with classrooms on each side—a design of the past. This building is like “a big academic horseshoe with the main street hallway, an interior courtyard…support spaces in the middles of the hallways, [and] all the classrooms on the outside [where] we’ve got the courtyard in the middle, which allows you to get light to the interior classrooms.”

“Natural light’s proven to help education,” Copeland adds. “It helps learning, so we got as much light into the building as we can.”

When planning began, Copeland says ideas were simply crystallizing; they were asking The Big Questions, starting from the ground up. They needed to know: “What’s it need to look like? Is it going to be a two-story building? What departments need to be next to each other?”

These questions helped to identify “clusters” he says, which became building blocks for the structure and kicked off the process of preliminary design drafts, feedback, revision, more drafts, and so on. Purposeful attention to layout enhances student learning, teacher collaboration and overall efficiency.

Consider the “circulation in the building—the flow,” Copeland says. “You walk down hallways in this building, and every hallway brings you back to somewhere. There’s only one, true dead-end hallway. In the academic wing, if you turn consecutive lefts, you’ll come back to where you started.”

Nothing was done by accident; Copeland was very intentional about gleaning input for each space and function of the school. And it shows.

ENHANCED STUDENT EXPERIENCE
Here’s where things get particularly detailed, and the idea of a “game changer” seems especially apt. Inside each of these bright, window-flanked classrooms, you find an environment primed for learning: visibility is optimized; distraction is minimized. Beatty’s assertion that student engagement will look differently isn’t an exaggeration. Any teacher will tell you that distractions are the enemy of student engagement. A student neglecting to charge their Chromebook (a standard issue item for every HHS student) could lead to the loss of valuable time. However, with the addition of multiple, retractable power cords hanging from the ceilings and the inclusion of numerous wall outlets, Chromebooks can stay continuously powered. And with the implementation of desk clusters and the addition of three TV monitors in every classroom, Copeland says that from “whatever orientation you’re facing” in a classroom—you can see a screen.

Since the old building “wasn’t adequate for modern education [and] didn’t lend itself to education in the last 10 years,” as Copeland says, there had to be what Beatty calls a “mindset shift.”

And part of that mindset shift will be an ongoing challenge for teachers, albeit one they welcome with open arms.
Wisskirchen is in a collaboration room, meaning it has “five different team project-based workstations all linked together via technology, so students can work together in groups,” Copeland says, and then teachers can easily project information onto all of the work station screens at once.

“I have lots of new technology to learn,” Wisskirchen says. “But learning is an opportunity for growth, and new technology will help our students engage in instruction and will help teachers differentiate their instruction for all types of learners.”

Intentional teacher input also influenced particular departments—those “clusters” Copeland mentioned. Drumheller says, “The arrangement of the rooms will. . .provide optimal use of technology and collaboration between students and teacher” because prep rooms are placed between larger classroom labs. . .[and we have] updated lab equipment, [which] will allow us to impact the education of our students in a profound way [because] we have been limited” in the past. He adds, “Being an Environmental Science teacher, it was quite funny not to be able to see outside.” Of course, like many other classrooms, Drumheller’s now faces out to the courtyard from up on the second story.

Lead art teacher Jon Roark is also excited about the windows and a direct doorway to the courtyard from his classroom.

Roark—whose collaborative work with students is visible all throughout the region from projects with the Academy Center of the Arts to published books—finally has facilities that match the talent he cultivates. The art suite is truly top of the line, equipped with 20 MacBooks, a pottery room with wheels and a large kiln, student work centers, ample storage, and, plenty of natural light.

“Now, we have the option to grow the program,” Copeland says.

FOCUS ON COMMUNITY
By Copeland’s estimation, and many others’, this new building will also finally reflect the community aspect and aspirations of the students who attend.

“My favorite memories are the interactions between teachers and students,” Wisskirchen says. “The school embraces the diversity of its students, and I always felt I was a part of something. . .It is a family atmosphere, and students are accepted for who they are.”

Appropriately, certain elements in the design emphasize this concept of community: the spacious courtyard; the cavernous gymnasium with basketball courts Beatty describes as “beautiful”; the keeping of the indoor track, which has long been Heritage’s claim to fame; the two-story media center with views of the Blue Ridge Mountains and ample seating for group or individual study.

Teachers will also benefit from improved opportunities for collaboration inside their five teacher work centers, all of which have conference tables, small kitchenette areas and flexible seating options.

Wisskirchen is looking forward to “seeing [students] congregate in the commons area, and for the community to see an example of what we can accomplish together.”

Now, at the end of this four-year project, Copeland says this is his favorite part, to see it all completed.

“To be given something like this, as much thought and effort went into it—students can now work to their highest level.”

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By Jennifer Redmond | Photos by LaSHONDA Delivuk

The top three difficulties THAT can interrupt a positive “back to school” mindset

After being out of school for three months, it can be difficult to get back into the swing of things. Students often struggle with their new routines, anxiety about the new year, or returning to academics. But coming back from summer vacation doesn’t have to be a negative experience. Here are a few things to consider to help everyone keep a positive outlook and start the new school year with success.

Difficulty #1 – Adjusting back to the schedule
For most students, one of the primary challenges is returning to a routine after a relaxed summer schedule.
“Most parents and students have a much different schedule during the summer than the school year,” said Ashley Wallace, director of elementary education at Campbell County Public Schools.

After playing hard and sleeping in, the adjustment to waking up early and having to follow a detailed schedule can be exhausting and challenging for both parents and students. While the advice might come a little late for this school year, Wallace has some advice for parents in the future. “For a positive start to the school year, I encourage parents and students to begin to adjust back to the school schedule a couple weeks prior to school starting,” she said.

When approaching the issue with older students, the same advice applies. Mary Mays, supervisor of school counseling and assessment coordinator for Amherst County Public Schools, said it takes about a week for older students to fully adjust back to a more rigid schedule.

Kacey Crabbe, director of the Lynchburg City Schools’ Empowerment Academy, agrees and believes parents must play an active role in their child’s schedule.

“Families can best help their students have a positive return by preparing them early for the routines that they will encounter and begin to enforce this at home,” said Crabbe. “[Make sure] they are involved in their student’s school and have the same set of expectations of students both at home and in school. Students are most successful when we instill a wrap-around approach.”

Difficulty #2 – Dealing with anxiety
For elementary students, Wallace explained that “fear of the unknown” is often a struggle at the beginning of the school year, whereas older students, between the ages of 12 and 15, might struggle more with social anxiety.

Mays also believes involvement in school activities, such as clubs and sports, might help older students who have some trouble with anxiety. It will help them feel more like a part of the school community.

“I would encourage the [struggling] student to get involved with school activities such as sports, clubs or other youth activities,” Mays said. “I would also encourage students to build their strengths and seek out students with the same talents.”
Open communication between parents and student about the new year is also very important when dealing with anxiety.

“Parents should ask their child if they have any concerns or are nervous about anything specific and address any of their concerns,” Wallace said.

Particularly for younger students, separation from parents can be stressful. Parents who have children attending school for the first time might experience separation anxiety.

“Some parents, if their child has never been away from home and is going to kindergarten or pre-k for the first time, and they’re going to be gone all day long, may worry about how their child is going to be feeling that whole day,” said Cindy Babb, coordinator of Public Information at LCS, said.

To help both parent and student adjust, she encourages parents to not visit their child’s school for the first week, so students can learn to adjust to the new environment.

“That can be difficult for some parents who haven’t had their child stay at daycare or any other places before, and it’s the first time they’re letting go of them really for the whole day,” Babb said.

But Babb explains when parents are around too much at the beginning of the year, young students have a difficult time recognizing their authority figures.

“If your child is not used to learning from another adult, listening to another adult and trusting another adult, because it’s a new environment for them to be in school, they need to learn that teachers are in charge of them that day,” Babb said.
Wallace explained they have several techniques in Campbell County to help with separation anxiety. They try to build a connection between the teacher and student, communicate to the student what he/she will be doing that day before returning home, and sometimes have a staff member walk the student to class.

“It is harder when the parent walks to the class, to then separate,” Wallace said.

If you or your student is struggling with the new school year, feel free to contact your student’s school.

“We’re here to help,” Babb said.

Difficulty #3 – Returning to academics
Although many school officials, including Crabbe, believe middle school students are the most likely to struggle with academics after returning from summer break, all students might experience obstacles as they try to readjust to a heavy academic load.

“Some of our students do have some difficulties with academics and having that eight- through ten-week break takes away from some of that,” Mays said. She explained that Amherst County teachers take time at the beginning of the year to help students re-adjust to the classroom and also to review academics.

There are many things that parents can do to help their children get back into the books.

“Developing a schedule for their child that includes a healthy breakfast, at home or school, time to do homework and read, and get plenty of sleep (will help),” Wallace said.

It is also beneficial to start developing a relationship with the student’s teacher, keep communication open, and become familiar with the student’s schedule and teacher expectations.

“Parents can look for ways daily to celebrate success at home,” Wallace said. “Make education an important focus at home.”
If your student is still struggling, most schools offer some form of academic assistance.

“In Campbell County we have a built in ‘Intervention and Enrichment’ time in the school day to provide targeted interventions for students [who] struggle,” Wallace said. “In addition, in our elementary [schools], we have reading specialists who provide focused interventions 30 minutes a day for students who are struggling [with reading].”

LCS recognized that students were having a difficult time re-adjusting back to academics after summer break and decided to look “outside the box” into different learning models. Last year, they launched a two-year plan that adds a week onto the beginning and end of the school year, making summer vacation shorter. To compensate for the longer school year, they added two optional weeks during the school year.

“We’re offering something called Intersession in October and in February where students who need additional support and/or enrichment can attend for three days out of the week,” Crabbe said. Intersession, which will meet Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of each Intersession week, will provide individualized instruction and provide more personalized support for students who need it.

As they begin the second year of this new schedule, LCS is looking forward to seeing the result and whether the shorter break helped with an easier academic transition.

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by Megan L. House

A Time to Build
Some moments leave us breathless with joyful anticipation, yet others swallow us with an avalanche of emotion. Jessica Borah, along with her four children, Rebekah, 18, Scott, 17, Lizzy, 15 and Benn, 14, have learned through the years to live the message from Ecclesiastes 3, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.”

More than 20 years ago, Jessica came to Liberty University as an elementary education major. During summer breaks, she would return home for Bible camp. That’s where she met her future husband from South Dakota, Chad Borah. Jessica’s father gave his blessing on their marriage but only if she finished her degree. So on August 5, 1995, the couple married and moved down to Lynchburg. Upon graduation they applied for jobs throughout the north Midwest but eventually landed jobs in Lynchburg. Jessica began teaching at New Covenant Schools, and Chad started working for Taylor Brothers Home Improvement.

As the young couple began to settle into Lynchburg living, they resolved that Virginia was becoming their home and knew they would be planted here for a while. So they began to hunt for property. After a year of searching and waiting, they discovered a piece of land in Amherst County that wasn’t graded for construction.

“We looked at other homes already built, but I grew up in a log home and was familiar with my dad building log homes,” Jessica said. “We waited for this property. We drove for over a year looking. Mountains were not something we were familiar with, but the Amherst Realty Company helped us get that spot to be able to see the mountains.”

Since the land had not been cleared, Chad climbed a tree to scope out the view ensuring they would have Virginia’s iconic mountains as part of their scenery.

“I was just worried about him falling,” Jessica said.

The property was very well priced at less than $1,000 per acre, so they planted their roots on that country hill.

Jessica grew up in Northern Michigan in a log home built by her Dad, so when it came time to build a house, her father was instrumental in the process. As a gift to their four children, her parents, Jack and Dolores Geers, offered Jack’s labor and time to build homes for each of Jessica’s siblings. Through an auction bid, her father won the rights to harvest as much cedar timber for three years as he wanted on a plot of land in Michigan, which enabled the Borahs to build their first house. In fact, it saved them so much money that hauling the logs to Virginia cost more than the actual logs themselves.

In Michigan, while much of the cedar timber resides in swamp, in the winter it freezes, making it easier to harvest logs. The couple traveled north that winter and helped Jessica’s siblings harvest logs for each of their homes. The Borahs had estimated they would need roughly 400 logs to build their now-five-bedroom, four-bathroom cabin, so with chainsaws, four wheelers and snow mobiles, they trudged through the swamp cutting down cedar. Then, they peeled off the bark and let the wood dry. It was a family project.

“Everyone helped each other,” Jessica said.

After several trips north to secure their wood, the Borahs came back to their life in Virginia. By the summer of 2000, a truck from Michigan hauled the wood to their new home. That fall they had their basement dug. Since a wood basement is not typical in Virginia, they had to convince building code inspectors that it was acceptable. Once the basement was approved, the pea stone gravel, plywood and sub-floors were installed. During Thanksgiving weekend that year, family, friends and church members pitched in and helped them put up walls. In log homes, it is ideal to thread for the electrical wiring while the exterior walls are being installed, so Jessica found herself making decisions on a whim to determine where outlets and switches should be placed. Since they were doing all the work themselves, they did not have a professional blueprint to work from—they simply relied on her father and brother’s knowledge and the graph paper they had sketched.

“We did everything ourselves,” Jessica said. “We learned how to wire with books from the Amherst County Library. I called him Edison—I was very proud of him for that.”

There are little oddities in the house that are now fun memories to Jessica. Since the couple literally touched every wall and stair, Jessica said any mistakes are also a part of the home’s story. There is one light switch in the house that is still a mystery.

“That one light may be turning on a light in China. I don’t know,” Jessica said in jest.

A Time to Embrace
In May 2001, the Borahs took a break from building because their third child Lizzy was born. Just two weeks after her birth, they packed up their rental house in Madison Heights and moved into their new log cabin. Every holiday Chad had off, he would invest his time into finishing the house. Memorial Day that year he laid hardwood floors. During the Fourth of July, he stained and finished those floors, and over Labor Day he worked on the deck outside. It was then that he came down with a bad case of what they thought was the flu. He backed off of working on the house for a while, but even so, his health got worse. By Thanksgiving he started to work on the home’s aesthetics, but he continued to feel bad and couldn’t even eat Thanksgiving dinner.

On December 16, 2001, he called Jessica from work and said he was going to the Emergency Room. He told her to stay home, and he would call her. (This was before cell phones were prominent, so it caused Jessica to worry while waiting.) By the next morning, they learned Chad had stomach cancer that had progressed significantly.

During that holiday season, the festivities were not their priority. After a brief hospital stay that ended December 23, they knew they were coming home with three young children to a house that wasn’t decorated for Christmas. But when they arrived, the family found a shower of blessings, thanks to Hyland Heights Baptist Church in Rustburg where they attended church and Taylor Brothers where Chad worked.

“Our home had the largest Christmas tree it’s ever had,” Jessica said. “Our home was taken care of.”

The tree that year stood nearly 22 feet tall in the loft area and was draped in decorations that Jessica still uses each Christmas. Friends took care of all the Borah’s physical needs that year and encouraged them both emotionally and spiritually. During that memorable Christmas, Chad’s family, including his two brothers and parents from South Dakota, also came into town as a surprise.

After the holidays, they threw all of their energies into Chad’s healing, focusing on possible surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatments. But by February 2002, outside of a miracle, they knew the prognosis was not good. By that point Chad could no longer work, and all of the details left in the house came to a screeching halt.

“He lived in the comfort of the house not worrying about unfinished projects but being thankful that he had a home for his family… while he was busy fighting to live longer with us,” Jessica said.

Since Jessica had been so focused on her husband’s health, she had not taken time to care for herself. She thought her body was reacting to stress and didn’t realize until she was five months along that she was pregnant with their fourth baby. It was during one of Chad’s oncologist appointments that she confided to the nurses her thoughts. They gave her an ultrasound in the adjoining office that day.

“I went into the x-ray rooms with Chad not knowing,” Jessica said.

“The Lord protected Benjamin. I knew the Lord was watching over him.”

The nurses recognized the sex of the baby but didn’t divulge the gender to Chad and Jessica upon their wishes. So Chad decided they should write both a boy’s name and a girl’s name on a piece of paper, let the nurse circle the correct gender and then fold the paper in case they ever wanted to know—but they never did.

“I carried that slip of paper from May until September as a symbol of hope, not needing to peek to find out in case Chad wasn’t around—he was going to get better,” Jessica said. They kept that little slip of paper to themselves until Chad passed away on September 16, 2002.

At his funeral, Jessica put that undisturbed piece of paper into his hand in the casket believing he knew what God had given them even before their baby boy was born. Their son Benjamin Jack was born October 4, 2002.

“It was so tender to bear a baby and Chad not be there, [but] what a joy when Benn was born,” Jessica said. “I knew that Chad knew and was with me.”
During that season, Jessica said she found comfort in scripture and felt very safe and protected on that country hill.

“I found solitude up on this ridge,” Jessica said. “It was very healing. I found the peace and serenity and protection of the Lord. Chad is a part of this home and his children’s home. It is a physical reminder their dad cared for them. He built this for them, and they can look and see what their Daddy in heaven has done for them.”

A Time to Heal
With the help of survivor benefits after Chad passed away, Jessica and the children lived for a season on the generosity of others.

“It met our needs and some of our wants,” Jessica said. “The amount of generosity from Taylor Brothers and Hyland Heights, those two bodies, sustained us. The first five Christmases I didn’t even need to buy my children a present. People gave monthly [to our family] for years because they wanted to — there are people that do that. We were never in want. It inspired me that I need to behave that same way.”

After time and distance began to heal, Jessica was able to get her wits about her and began making small but thrifty additions to the home. During that time, she also started to homeschool the children, which welcomed her into a new circle of friends. Due to the long distance drive, as well as the physical reminder that Chad’s presence was missing each Sunday, she made a change. With their blessing, she left her home at Hyland Heights Baptist Church in 2004 and started attending Providence Church in Lynchburg.

“I stepped from one family into another,” Jessica said.

In 2008, Jessica returned to New Covenant Schools as a part-time teacher, which also allowed the children to attend school there. She said the distance from their home became a blessing because the drive time provided them each a chance to exhale and clear their minds after school.

A Time to Plant
During the fall of 2009, Jessica attended the wedding of a friend from New Covenant Schools. At that wedding she sat on the bride’s side while a gentleman named Robert sat on the groom’s side. They began talking and formed a bond. In June 2010, they were married.

“I knew that if and when I ever married, it would have to be a very special man,” Jessica said.

She acknowledged that she didn’t want Robert to feel like Chad was always present and the family was comparing. But with his personality, he got to know her and the kids and completely stepped into his new role.

When Robert, along with his three sons, now ages 15, 19 and 22 joined the family, they added a new and fresh dynamic. With four young children, Jessica never had the time to focus on landscaping, but Robert took the liberty to add a huge vegetable garden, providing the family with an abundance of bounty, including blueberries, strawberries and blackberries, along with 20 different prospering fruit trees. He also introduced them to chickens that provide eggs. When it’s time to get fruit, all the kids climb trees to help out; the boys take care of the chickens. Throughout the fall, the boys are expected to get up and cut wood to help heat the home during the winter months. In turn, the girls help gather from the garden and have learned from their mom how to prepare and can vegetables.

“Robert had a vision,” Jessica shared. “He plants it, he waters it, he’s the voice and we try to keep up with it. It has helped everyone try new things that I may not buy in the grocery store. It is very satisfying.”

Robert also helped upgrade the log cabin’s heat source and finished the basement, adding one bedroom and one bathroom to accommodate his older boys when they are home.

“He picked up what Chad started and has carried on,” Jessica said. “Chad is their Daddy in heaven, but Robert is their flesh and blood Dad now.”

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Photography by Tera Janelle Auch

In 1988, the Lynchburg community came together to fund and build a large wooden playground at Linkhorne Elementary School (LES), a location dubbed then as “Play At Linkhorne” or PAL. Since then, PAL has been a place for everyone to enjoy, not just students at the school.

“People will bring their grandchildren to PAL. People that go to other local elementary schools will come to play. It really is a neighborhood playground,” said Stacey Felmlee, former LES Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) president.

Unfortunately, about 10 years ago, the structure really started to show its age. Parts of the playground had to be removed due to rotting or splintered wood that was unsafe for children.

Fast forward to 2012—Felmlee decided it was past time to take action. “We knew the time had finally come to replace the beloved playground, which had far exceeded its original 15-year lifespan,” she said.

Felmlee and the PTO were excited to learn Lynchburg City Schools would put $50,000 toward a new playground. “But we were also shocked at how little $50,000 produced in playground equipment,” she said.

However, they didn’t let a steep price tag keep them from their goal. In early 2013, the LES PTO decided to begin a $100,000 fundraising campaign and fully replace PAL in two additional phases.

“We marketed it as a community project because it really benefits the whole community and not just the school children at LES,” said Felmlee.

Over the next three years, their efforts included grant writing, two Walk-a-Thons and grassroots efforts like classroom piggy banks. PTO members also secured donations from businesses like MH Masonry, who donated materials and labor to build a brick walkway leading up to the playground.

The most community involvement came from a campaign to sell engraved bricks for that walkway to LES families, community members and even individual classes.

The PTO also reached out to the community for sponsors, and donations of more than $500 are recognized on a new kiosk beside the playground equipment, marking the true completion of the project.

Aside from raising the funds, Felmlee and some other PTO members also played a big role in designing the new playground. They customized the features to ensure the equipment would accommodate children up to age 12 and encourages movement, balance, upper body strength and collaboration. Some of the biggest attractions for children are a climbing wall, numerous slides and swings, and a zip line.

“The new playground is so much bigger, and there are so many more things to do. You don’t know which one to go to first,” said Felmlee’s 9-year-old daughter Lexi.
The LES PTO also put a lot of thought into what the new playground would look like aesthetically.

“The original playground was all wood and had a natural look. When we moved to this material, we wanted to keep it as natural as possible so we chose mostly browns and greens,” said Felmlee.

And no one misses that original natural element, especially the kids.

“The wood was a pain in the butt!” said 9-year-old Cooper Payne, who enjoys spending time playing on the new equipment. “One time, I got a splinter in my palm, and my parents had to use a needle to get it out.”

Thanks to a generous community and a dedicated mom, parents are spending less time at home playing nurse and more time hearing about all of the fun things their kids get to do at the community’s newest playground.

“It was a long three-year endeavor for sure. But to see the kids play and have the positive feedback…it’s all very rewarding,” said Felmlee.

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By Shelley Basinger | Photos by LaShonda Delivuk

A family’s intentional approach to generate authentic hospitality in their home

All in the Family
Rodney Foster grew up building homes alongside his dad and brother in and around the Lynchburg area. After he graduated high school from Liberty Christian Academy, he attended college at Liberty University, where he earned a business degree and married his high school sweetheart, Heidi, just four weeks after graduation.

Over the years, Foster continued to work in the family business, and, in 2000, he joined forces with his dad and became a partner. When his dad retired, Rodney took over Foster Builders.

“I picked up a tool belt and kept going,” Rodney said.

Most of what they build are custom homes, but they have done some commercial designs as well. With three guys on his crew, this small family-owned and -operated business gains a majority of its customers from grassroots marketing efforts, such as word-of-mouth recommendations from friends, church members and repeat customers.

“They call back because he’s honest and a hard worker,” Heidi, Rodney’s wife of 20 years and office manager, said. “He designs around the families’ needs. It’s part of Rodney’s ministry.”

Heidi has transitioned into the company’s office manager by handling all the bookkeeping and managing rental properties. By default, she has even become an interior designer for some of their clients’ houses. Having a lot of experience in her own home, sometimes by trial and error, she has gained the knowledge to assist homeowners with color choices and aesthetic finishes, trying to keep the style cohesive throughout the house by steering them in the right direction. In jest, Rodney said Heidi’s official title is “Boss Lady.”

“It’s one way I can help him,” Heidi said. “It gives me another purpose.”

The couple has two girls and one boy—Bailey, 14, Dalton, 12, and Emme Sue, 8.

The children attend New Covenant Schools, where Bailey plays volleyball, Dalton plays lacrosse and all three play basketball. As a family, they all stay quite busy, but they are devoted in setting aside time for each other.

“We’re big into having family dinners,” Heidi said. “We have devotions after dinner.”

A Work in Progress
The Fosters have taken their business to heart and are now living in the sixth personal house that they’ve built for their own family, in essence creating a blank canvas to design and practice on. Though they say it’s a work in progress since there are still areas to be finished, they enjoy designing for themselves. Rodney jokingly said, “When the Lord takes us, there will be a ‘For Sale’ sign in our front yard.”

The most recent home the Fosters built is a 3,500-square-foot house in Forest that became a family endeavor with four bedrooms, five and a half bathrooms and a two car garage. On the main floor, they have one guest room.

Rodney and Heidi were purposeful to include all the children in the entire process. As they began to build, their son Dalton helped his dad pour the footings and add the trim to the house. He even got to help inside with some design elements, such as the reclaimed wood wall they added in their living room. The wood came from the flooring of a barn in Spout Spring that Rodney had previously torn down. They also allowed the children to help with decisions such as picking out paint colors. Each child has their own room, as well as a separate bathroom, which also gives them each a canvas to play with. With their growing ages, they felt it was necessary to have a lot of bathrooms in the house—an added perk to having a dad as a builder. Their son Dalton got an added bonus in his room with a loft area that has both a ladder and stairs leading up to its high ceiling for easy access. His loft bedroom is a unique space where he can lounge and hang out with friends, growing with him into his teenage years.

From a design standpoint, the Fosters say they are drawn to décor with a modern edge that has a mix of rustic. Everything in their home has a matte finish, including their floors, which are hand scraped, since they don’t care for polished finishes.

They purchased their floors from Piedmont Floor Design in Forest. They chose honed Brazilian marble counters for their kitchen, pantry and laundry room, while the bathrooms received a combination of granite, soapstone and marble from Spectrum Stone Designs, LLC in Concord. The kitchen is home to simple Design-Craft brand white Potter’s Mill Shaker style cabinetry from Pinnacle Cabinetry & Design in Wyndhurst. Their oversized island and Butler’s Pantry, a small service and storage room between a kitchen and a dining room, was given a rustic gray hue known as appaloosa—a specialty finish achieved by combining several elements like distressing, antique brushing and spatter, consisting of gray undertones and charcoal brushed highlights. The tile backsplash adorns a handmade subway tile, which was the only shiny element they incorporated as a way to balance all the matte finishes and reflect the under-mount lighting. The light fixtures they selected are all new from Timberlake Lighting but have a vintage industrial aesthetic. In the master bathroom, they incorporated a newer design element found in the marketplace by installing heated porcelain tile floors that are meant to look like wood. On the exterior of the house, Rodney built the home’s front porch beams and ceiling in all cedar and used tongue and groove pine ceilings on the screen porch and balcony off the master bedroom. Innovative Stoneworks LLC in Rustburg did the rock work on the exterior of the house along with the home’s fireplace.

“We don’t like fancy,” Heidi said.

“Our houses are not lavish or overdone. We like rustic, but not country. I like things that look old.”

Paying it Forward
For nearly nine years, the Fosters were heavily involved in an organization called Young Life—a program that connects middle school, high school and college students with adults that reach into their world and build bridges of authentic friendship. Before she was married, Heidi had a family who took her in and left an impact on her life. The Fosters have taken her life lesson and now use it as part of their ministry to others.

“During my last two years of college my parents moved to Indiana, and our neighbors, the Quesenberry family, offered for me to live with them,” Heidi said. “I lived there until I got married, which was four weeks after graduating college. They didn’t charge me anything and just treated me like family. I cooked for them occasionally and helped around the house, but I was in school full-time and working full-time. They really became my second family.”

Heidi recalls the family as being kind and generous not only to her and Rodney but to everyone in their Poplar Forest neighborhood.

“I watched them care for many around them in need. They have true servants’ hearts. So they are really the reason that we have opened our home to others. It has been such a joy to give kids a temporary home until they are able to get established on their own just like the Quesenberry family did for me. It was a gift I could never repay to them, but maybe we can just pay it forward to someone else.”

Over the years, they have housed nine young adults for an extended period of time, which they fondly refer to as their “cellar dwellers.” The young adults are usually associated with the Young Life programs at Randolph College, Lynchburg College or Liberty University. Typically, their “cellar dwellers” are nearing the end of college, getting their master’s degree or just in between seasons of life.

“We’ve been to so many weddings,” the couple said. “It’s a lot of fun. It keeps you young.”

“We open our house to people that need a home—a B&B,” Heidi said.

“We are intentional about making it a place where people feel at home. They’ve become family. We let God bring the ones that would be a good
fit for our family.”

Though they love to open their house, they say that their children come first so they take some safety precautions. They filter each tenant through a series of personal recommendations.

The Fosters also welcome out-of-town guests to stay at their house during big events, such as graduations. It’s not uncommon to find 70 to 80 people gathering in their home for a large party or devotional group. Currently, Heidi’s parents are living in their basement, exemplifying their desire to extend hospitality. As they fondly say, “We’re everyone’s Foster family.”

A unique element the couple included in the home is an area they refer to as the Butler’s Station. This area includes a beverage fridge and coffee makers. Across from that is a counter that becomes a prep space with a pocket door they can close off to hide clutter. As a builder, they have access to everything, but they wanted to keep things simple, yet efficient.

“We were intentional with all our sitting areas—give them a burger and talk about problems,” Rodney said. “It’s what we feel like we’ve been called to do.”
In all their hospitality, the Fosters are also very intentional about making sure the “cellar dwellers” contribute to the family during their stay. They don’t ask them to pay rent, but they set up guidelines and ground rules. They must keep their space clean and pitch in as a family member would. They ask the females to babysit or cook weekly and their male tenants often go out to work with Rodney. Heidi said she enjoys teaching some of the young women who don’t know much about the kitchen how to cook. The kids also seem to enjoy the additional guests and welcome each of them into the family. The Fosters say the older students often mentor their kids and become like much older siblings.

“The Lord has blessed,” Rodney said.

With the serene colors and wide open space, this soothing and tranquil home not only ushers in calm emotions aesthetically, but allows the Foster family to do their part by welcoming all guests with open arms and freely share their lives with all who enter.

For more information about Foster Builders, Inc., email Fosterbuilder@gmail.com or call 434-832-1116. You can also visit their office located at 115 B Tradewynd Drive in Wyndhurst.

Heather Cravens is a Lynchburg native with 10 years of experience in the interior design industry, including owning Becoming Designs. Heather is passionate about creating environments that inspire and build families through the hospitality of their home. She mirrors that passion with her own family by spending time with her husband and their one-year old son.

When steamy summer days settle in, the fun is over for some gardeners. It’s time to duck off to the beach or tuck into air-conditioned houses.

But not so for this gardener. Admittedly, it’s sticky business keeping up with watering, weeding, deadheading and clearing debris from spent perennials to make way for the succession of acts in summer’s spectacular flower show. Lady-like “glistening” doesn’t come close to capturing the sweaty, earthy look I sport after a few hours of summer garden labor. So if you join me as a summer gardener, remember to drink lots of water and pause for frequent cool-down breaks as you orchestrate the show.

And the glorious show is well worth the work! Summer gardens boast a breathtaking array of blooms in a riot of exuberant colors, sizes and shapes, as well as abundant edible yield.

But before getting carried away by summer’s bounty, let’s backtrack and start with the garden’s bones. The key to a successful landscape isn’t simply lush greens and colorful flowers to catch the eye. It’s the structural framework that organizes our plant material and transforms it into a cohesive visual delight. Some structural elements are natural—large trees or rocks, a pond or steep slope; some are constructed—walls, fences, terraces, pools, pathways, gazebos, arbors and seating groups. Some pre-exist and define garden options; some are added.

So how do we go about creating good, strong “bones” for an effective garden design?

Purpose of the Garden
First, our design must meet our needs and goals—what we want from our garden. Looking back through time, we recall simple and functional layouts of kitchen gardens for culinary and medicinal purposes.

Polar opposite goals were boasted by majestic Renaissance gardens of European castles and palaces, such as the Boboli Gardens in Florence and Sudeley Castle in England. And modern-day gardens may seek to fulfill multiple purposes: aesthetic pleasure, personal enjoyment, respite, environmental sustainability and more.

Climate, Terrain and Horticultural Requirements
Whatever the purpose, garden structure is dictated by what we can actually grow in our climate and the size and topography of the space—whether it’s flat or hilly, sunny or shady, wet or dry, windy or sheltered. And we need to amend the soil to suit our plant choices.

We also want to look at how our terrain relates to the surrounding landscape. If it offers the borrowed beauty of a breathtaking vista of mountains or a neighbor’s garden, we’ll certainly want our layout to take best advantage of these attributes. Or a fence or “green screen” can hide a less appealing view.

Boundaries and Surfaces
Property lines, location of the house, other structures and driveways establish garden boundaries. We may also install fences or walls to protect our property from interlopers, winds, or unsightly views, to create microclimates, or purely for aesthetic reasons.
Within our parameters, we can design new shapes and spaces and modify existing ones by subdividing into several smaller gardens. In my backyard, I have a gazebo garden, sunbather sculpture garden, barn garden, St. Francis garden, kitchen garden, and…well, you get the point. Garden boundaries beg to be changed. Every year, I add a new garden or expand an old one in search of more sun or shade, for new plant varieties, or by redesigning a border curve or pathway.

Lawns remain a staple in Central Virginia, although the current national trend is toward more naturalistic planting design with native plants or wildflowers in lieu of expanses of turf. Other trends include using wood chips, gravel or pebbles to create breathing spaces between heavily planted areas and installing permeable surfaces for driveways and terraces to eliminate excess surface water runoff into our storm sewers, streams and rivers. If you’re not already a convert, you may want to explore these trends and become part of the fast-growing “sustainable landscapes” movement.

Culture, Style and Taste
The next step is to consider basic historic garden designs and choose your own personal style. Your preference may be a Persian or Islamic garden divided into a perfectly symmetrical pattern of four equal sectors with channeled water as a critical element for both irrigation and aesthetics. Or you may be drawn to Chinese and Japanese garden designs that are no less controlled, but offer a more organic, curvy and naturalistic asymmetrical design—or the Zen garden with rocks, moss and raked stones.

Other design choices, influenced by the Renaissance period in Europe, also feature geometrical, rectilinear and axial plans.
The backbone of the classical Italian garden is a central axis with cross-axes leading to sculptural focal points, and evergreen plants are used to form patterned knots or parterres. These, as with Persian gardens, may be filled with flowering plants, such as roses, or left open.

Perhaps you’d even like to try your hand at creating a human-scale version of a grand and formal French Renaissance or Baroque garden with elaborate highly-stylized parterres, topiaries, and espaliered trees and shrubs pruned into improbable shapes and sizes that defy nature.

But a less rigid, more relaxed approach seems to be the mainstay of our local aesthetic. Most local gardens tend to take their cues from the English landscape garden style popularized by Lancelot “Capability” Brown, Gertrude Jekyll’s “garden rooms” with overflowing herbaceous borders, and noted Southern landscape architect Charles Gillette.

Should you prefer a more modern, minimalist garden style featuring little more than sleek lines of hardscaping in stone, hardwood or rendered walls, the planting style is simple with a few drifts of one or two plants, such as interesting ornamental grasses, to highlight summer bounty.
For today’s gardener, anything goes. We are free to choose formal or informal, traditional or modern designs—or an eclectic style. Taste is personal, so we home gardeners can design what feels right for us.

Putting It All Together
Experts advise developing a long-term plan and detailed strategy and then placing plant “bones”—trees, evergreen hedges, anchor plants. We can create our own design and plant it ourselves or hire professional landscapers for challenging areas. I’ve done both.
If we are unsure of soil conditions or what to plant, we can always seek free advice from the Hill City Master Gardener Association (434-455-3740; www.hcmga.com).

When planning, we want to define circulation patterns and areas for living, playing and other functions—some practical and some purely sensory. We’ll want to select materials complementary to our homes and embrace principles of design for scale, proportion, repetition, sequence, variety and balance. And, of course, we don’t want to forget the garden view from inside the house!

If you love formal gardens, a simple design could be a trimmed evergreen hedge of geometric shape enclosing a flowerbed filled with summer-blooming flowers. Or, if you prefer, you could define borders and beds by trenching edges between beds and grass, outlining with edging plants or hardscaping.
You may even wish to create a Shakespeare garden, memorial garden, white or red garden or any other creative theme that lights your fire! Have fun and add a secret garden or other elements of surprise!

When putting soft flesh on those garden bones, for a more abundant, bountiful look, choose plants with a variety of texture and form. Mix low, medium, and high; spire, creeping, mounding; and create focal points to draw and hold the eye. Envision how the succession of bloom, scale and speed of growth, and combinations of plants will affect the appearance of the garden. Oh, and don’t forget to consider how maintenance requirements relate to available time and funds.

Finally, add garden furniture that suits your lifestyle—tables and chairs for entertaining, play places for the little ones, and serene spots for meditation. If you enjoy garden art, go for your style—whether classical statuary, contemporary sculptures, or whimsical rust art. (I love them all in my garden.) And don’t forget the value of safety lighting and spotlighting.

Bounty!
Some gardeners, including myself (I confess), start digging with a general vision, but without a formal game plan and will always find a home for any plant that’s a gift or strikes our fancy. The important thing is that your garden is YOURS, reflecting your personality with plant material that makes you happy. If you love a plant, even if others call it a weed, go ahead and enjoy it in your garden, as I do.

The “Country Cottage Garden” concept sparked my flame and has been right for me and our colonial-style house. My summer garden is filled with blooming roses and countless varieties of perennials, most conspicuously hundreds of daylilies—robust perennials, easy to grow and boasting a variety of bold, cheerful colors.

And all came from 10 original plants gifted by a neighbor.

My latest craze for summer bounty is tough care-free native plants that thrive on summer heat and survive drought—butterfly weed, milkweed, Joe Pye weed (that “weed” word again), summer phlox, Rudbeckia, and so many more. Borders and beds overflow with an abundance of flowers successively blooming from June into fall. They speak to me not of formal grandeur but of grace and casual charm.

Then as one cluster of blooms drifts into another, creating a natural summer lushness, they sing the word “bounty” to me.

And at the end of the day, I sit on the terrace with my glass of wine and savor their beauty.

Words & Photos by Susan Timmons

A Glimpse into a Studio Apartment, a Downtown Condo & Rental Townhouse

Learning to maximize the space in a small home can present challenges and force decisions. Which couch to keep? How many coffee mugs are really necessary? For each of the three families featured, they enjoy the clarity resulting from limited space and have found creative ways to still reflect their passions.

Downtown Studio Apartment: Bringing Community Into a Young Couple’s Space
For Timothy and Brittannie Moroz, living in a downtown studio is both an economical choice and a way to build community.
“We love the downtown Lynchburg area,” Tim said. “We wanted a space that could fit a large amount of people and feel more connected with downtown [because] we really value community.”

When they were dating, Tim lived downtown, but once married, they moved to Forest. After a job change, however, the young couple began looking for something less expensive. Since they are heavily involved in their church and host a community group that meets in their home weekly, they needed a space that could entertain a larger group of people. Most of the downtown spaces were either too small or too expensive for their price point, until they discovered Red Star Flats, modern industrial studios next to Farmers Seed & Supply Co. Inc.

“We weren’t seriously looking at studios until we saw this one,” Brittannie said. “The kitchen was our biggest selling point.
It’s just beautiful.”

“The space is really nice,” Tim said. “They did a really good job of renovating. It felt like home right away.”

This past summer the couple traveled to Copenhagen, Denmark and then on to Sweden—known for good design—and so the trip provided a crash course in Scandinavian style. While traveling, they read a quote that has since been adopted for their home: “If something is not both beautiful and functional, it doesn’t belong in your home.”

Both of them echo that having this mindset makes it easier to live in such an open layout.

“We like our stuff, [so] we didn’t mind having it out for everyone to see,” Brittannie said. “[I was] surprised how easy it’s been to get to the bare necessities.”

“In our space, it’s all on display,” Tim said. “We liked the idea of paring down. It’s nice to go backwards a little bit. It’s not a long term solution, but it’s a lot of fun.”

Together, the Morozes have enjoyed designing a space that brings some challenges. They are not allowed to drill new holes into the original wood paneling or brick due to its historic value, so the couple has to work with the holes that already exist—which creates a random art gallery that somehow works. “We love the random mix,” Tim said. “We have to be careful about our visual real estate.”

On the one small patch of drywall they do have, they installed shelving, which houses baking supplies and cereals.

A sentimental design element the couple incorporated is a world map painted from coffee.

“We love sharing a cup of coffee with people, and we love to travel,” Brittannie said, describing the piece her sister painted.

“We try to see as much of the world as we can. It was a sweet gift she gave us.”

Downsizing from a two-bedroom apartment to a studio was a challenge, but because there are no walls dividing the home, it feels very open and is a good reminder to keep stuff clean.

“It’s been good for us to recognize we don’t have to look perfect,” Brittannie said. “It’s a good exercise for us, and we get to invite people into that. It blesses us and keeps us humble when it’s messy.”

One aspect of open-concept living the couple has embraced is how welcoming the space is. As a couple, the Morozes have tried to reflect their values and passions in the way they live, which they describe as: Jesus, family and mission. One way they emulate what they believe is by inviting people to engage as a family. Since they have many visitors in their home every week, they welcome guests to share in their most intimate spaces.

“It feels like a great big family in a tiny little box,” Brittannie said. “You get real close, real fast.”

“It has helped develop really meaningful relationships,” Tim said.

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Downtown Condominium: Downsizing from an Empty Nest
Libby and Paul Fitzgerald loved their home in Boonsboro, but since none of their three adult children or six grandchildren live locally, they no longer needed all of the space with five bedrooms. So they began the two-year process of downsizing and selling their home.

Though they have lived in Lynchburg for 45 years, the family is originally from New York, and so they are more accustomed to urban living. As they began to downsize, they felt a strong draw towards the new downtown James River Place condominiums.

“We have kind of come full circle,” Libby said. “It was very freeing to get down to what we really loved, and the rest we shed. We loved [our home] all those years, but I marvel at how I have not looked back with any nostalgia. It was a great decision—a perfect fit.”

Since moving two years ago from a 5,400-sqare-foot home to a 2,200-square-foot condominium, the Fitzgeralds found downsizing to be an unburdening.

“The idea of downsizing is daunting,” Libby said. “We came to terms with the likelihood that the taste of our children is different.”

She recommends that one approach downsizing by focusing on the “essentials and [not] surrounded with a lot of stuff you don’t need. It’s a tough and tedious job, but at some point you have to do it.”

In her words, to downsize removes a burden from your children; if you sift through the artifacts of decades’ worth of stuff then “you’ve done your children [favors] with the biggest job in the world. Don’t leave that for them to do. Spare your children,” Libby said.

She added that their new home on Jefferson Street is not radically different in style but rather a variation of what they had before. As they designed their new space, Libby was tasked with the challenge of incorporating years of collections into a much smaller area than she was accustomed to. Many of their paintings and pottery have come from both their worldwide travels and from local artists. A number of paintings are from trips they took to Ireland, Venice and France. The couple has also taken bike trips to Tuscany, Italy and Provence, France, as well as Quebec and the Canadian Rockies, where they added to their very storied and traveled collection. The Fitzgeralds also appreciate local talent, including a prized piece hanging over their living room fireplace from The Little Gallery at Smith Mountain Lake in Moneta, Va.

“We love collecting art,” Libby said. “We [also] love pottery, from away and local.”

With three bedrooms in their condo, they utilize the extra two rooms as office space for each of them, giving them individual, private areas to call their own.

“It’s important to have your own space in a small [home],” Libby said.

When family comes to visit, grandchildren stay on roll-out beds and adult children enjoy nights at the Craddock Terry Hotel—easily accessible from the condo.

After moving, the Fitzgeralds found a slower pace of life. In fact by living in such close proximity to everything downtown, Libby said she tries to group all her errands into just one day so she can enjoy all the benefits that downtown Lynchburg offers.

“We feel like we’re on vacation,” Libby said. “The thing I love the most is I walk everywhere—to the YMCA and to church, everything I need is down here, except [a] grocery. I try very hard not to have to leave downtown in my car.”

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Heather’s Takeaway Tips:

1. Downsizing: Prioritize what is most important. Keep what you really like but be selective. It can be a daunting process, so steady your pace and realize it will benefit your children not to have to make those decisions one day.
2. Use What You Already Own: After years of collecting, don’t try to start over buying new. Use what you already own in creative new ways. Reupholster furniture, group artwork in a gallery manner and utilize vertical storage to maximize space.
3. Think Before You Buy: Small spaces can cause you to stop and think before buying. Do you have room for it? Will it add to the ambience or distract from what’s most important in the room? Be selective with where you invest. Think quality not quantity.

Photography by Tera Janelle Auch

Facts of Life as Told by Pollinators

Back in the day we parents squirmed over the inevitable “facts of life” talk with our kids. You know, that talk about “The Birds and the Bees.” And today’s parents are faced with the imperative to add a second “Birds and Bees” talk to their already-overburdened parenting skills repertoire.

This one’s the literal talk about birds and bees—and butterflies, bats, moths, other beneficial insects, and indeed all pollinators—and facts of life about human dependence on pollinators for our survival here on earth.

Plight of the Pollinators
We’re all aware by now of a significant reduction in pollinator populations and the grim predictions of their impending demise since reports in 2006 of one-quarter of U.S. bee colonies suffering a mysterious and lethal disease called Colony Collapse Disorder made big news.

Pollinators are struggling for their very existence; their extinction would diminish the variety of life on this earth, and there’s considerable buzz circling them these days. Currently, our honeybee population is continuing to decline drastically from a variety of causes—primarily parasites, exposure to toxic chemicals such as Bayer’s neonicotinoid pesticides and habitat loss.

Monarch butterflies have joined honeybees as the current headline-grabbing poster children of the dwindling pollinator world. Some butterfly species are already extinct, and it’s been reported that the monarch population has suffered more than an 80% decline in the past two decades—from more than one billion in the mid-1990s to 56.5 million last year—primarily due to pesticides and habitat loss, along with vagaries of weather.

Every time homeowners, farmers, or highway departments mow or spray pesticides on milkweed, they destroy the only habitat and food source nature has provided for caterpillar-stage monarchs and cut the monarch’s life cycle short.

And illegal logging is doing the same to the monarchs in Mexico.

Even designating monarch-protected reserves for overwintering grounds in Mexico hasn’t stopped loggers from illegally clear-cutting reserve acreage and wiping them out.

Why We Care
When birds flutter and dive through flowering trees and shrubs, they distribute pollen, while most other pollinators spread pollen as they flit from flower to flower for a meal of nectar. On the most fundamental level, we humans need these birds, bees, butterflies and a great variety of other pollinators because our food source is reliant on them. A recent report notes that nearly 100 varieties of nuts, fruits and vegetables such as almonds, apples, pumpkins and cranberries require honeybees for pollination, and the production of other types of crops is dependent on different pollinators.

The bottom line is that pollinators are responsible for one out of three bites of food we eat each day.

As for monarchs, they intrigue us. They’re The Beauty Queen of butterflies and engage our attention with fascinating migration patterns. But cosmetic, feel-good sensory pleasures aren’t the only reasons for us to care about them. They are also powerful pollinators, and their steady decline alerts us to the imminence of their extinction.

Pollinator alarm bells sound for even the most ardent optimist, and a simple Google search will inundate you with more depressing facts than you’ll want to know. Consider a recent United Nations report warning that:
• 40% of pollinators face extinction.
• Nearly 90% of all wild flowering plants depend at least to some extent on animal pollinators.
• Pollinators are important to many of the foods that are key sources of the vitamins and minerals in our diet. Nutritionally, the pollinator decline will likely have the biggest impact on the poorest people of the world.

Efforts to Stem the Tide of Extinction
Now for the silver lining: Government, politicians, lawyers, scientists, educators, writers, publishers, conservationists, gardeners, and schoolchildren (and the list goes on) are joining forces to save our pollinators. The White House has released a National Strategy to Protect Pollinators and Their Habitat, the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is engaging states to develop a state managed Pollinator Protection Plan and Virginia’s planning process is underway. The EPA is also expediting reassessment of systemic insecticides like neonicotinoids.

On all fronts, efforts are underway to save the pollinators. American novelist Barbara Kingsolver captured our imagination and touched our monarch-loving hearts in Flight Behavior and National Geographic just announced a new book to transform home gardens into havens for Birds, Bees & Butterflies including tips on the art of beekeeping.

Here at home in Central Virginia, we proudly claim the world’s foremost expert in monarch research, Dr. Lincoln Brower, Biology professor at Sweet Briar College and nominee for the prestigious 2016 Indianapolis Prize, the world’s leading award for animal conservation. Dr. Brewer has been studying monarchs for more than 50 years, and for 30 of those years his personal mission has been preservation of this butterfly.

Education Is Power
The international Xerces Society and other nonprofits, colleges and universities, Master Gardener associations and garden clubs are all working diligently to educate citizens on how to protect bees and other pollinators and encourage planting flower gardens to attract and nourish pollinators. In April, a lecture on beekeeping was featured during Garden Day in Lynchburg, hosted by the Lynchburg Garden Club and Hillside Garden Club as part of The Garden Club of Virginia’s Historic Garden Week in Virginia.

Also in April, Dr. Brower spoke on “Monarch butterflies and the North American Flora” at the Virginia Federation of Garden Clubs’ annual convention here in Lynchburg. Other international collaborative efforts include the work of Dr. Dave Goulson, University of Sussex, UK and author of the Sciencexpress review: “Bee Declines Driven by Combined Stress from Parasites, Pesticides, and Lack of Flowers.”

As a Master Gardener, I regularly receive notice of webinars and conferences such as North Carolina State University’s recent conference on “Protecting Pollinators in Ornamental Landscapes.” And I was delighted to see a genuine passion for pollinator protection and conservation by garden club members here in Lynchburg and in Danville recently when I presented Master Gardener programs on “Native Plants for Sustainable Landscapes.”

We as Central Virginia home gardeners and landscapers can flex our leadership muscle by joining the ever-growing swarm of pollinator-rescue “worker-bees.” We can spread the word, join an activist group, become beekeepers and/or plant gardens to attract and sustain pollinators.

Become a Beekeeper
Since bees are the major source of pollination (in addition to producing products such as honey and beeswax), interest in beekeeping is on a steady uptick—even in cities (including Lynchburg)—by those who are passionate about increasing our dwindling bee population. My own sisters, Betsy and Jan, completed a beekeeping course at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden and have established honeybee hives in their backyards in Richmond.

Because of the critical nature of protecting and preserving our bee population, beekeeping is now supported by government subsidies in the United States. The U.S. Department of Agriculture provides grants for beekeeping education, start up supplies and colony stipends for raising bees.

Plant a Pollinator Garden
We gardeners can help fix the “lack of flowers” problem by planting milkweed and a diversity of other flowering plants that provide nectar to support pollinators in our own home and community gardens. These can be flowering annuals, perennials, groundcovers, shrubs and trees. Native plants are at the top of this planting list, since they co-evolved with our native (and most efficient) pollinators, especially native bees. Massed plantings are most effective, but even a few plants make a difference.

Be sure to purchase plants from pollinator-friendly nurseries, garden centers and suppliers that offer pollinator compatible
(non-sterile) plants and seeds suited for our local area. Also look for locally-grown starter plants and seeds at the annual Hill City Master Gardener Association’s ‘Festival of Gardening’ on May 7th at Miller Park. Don’t forget to keep an eye out for free seeds! One of my favorite sources is “roadside weed” seeds when I can beat the mowing crews to them.

Hill City Master Gardener Kris Lloyd writes of her success story in Masters in the Garden, “It is monarch madness at Bedford Hills [Elementary School]! In April 2014, we were sent about 30 milkweed plants by Monarch Watch through a grant program for schools. They struggled the first year, but this year [2015] the milkweed doubled and bloomed profusely in June.” The proof of the pudding was that it attracted monarchs, and Lloyd harvested seed to start additional milkweed plants for distribution to the school community this spring. Original funding from the National Resources Defense Council jump-started Lloyd’s successful efforts at Bedford Hills School, and there are other opportunities for corporate and philanthropic sponsorship of seed and plant resources.

Join the Challenge
The Million Pollinator Garden Challenge (millionpollinatorgardens.org) is a “nationwide call to action to preserve and create gardens and landscapes that help revive the health of…pollinators across America.” The campaign began in June 2015 to register one million public and private landscapes that support pollinators. Last summer I added more pollinator-friendly flowering plants to my garden and was thrilled when a dozen monarchs chose it for a fall migratory feasting layover.

My garden’s now registered with the Challenge and beckons visiting grandchildren to share the joy! All this “birds and bees” business can turn into a lot of family fun.

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Words & Photos by Susan Timmons

The ‘Why’ of Gardening

What’s up with gardeners anyway? What motivates us to plan, organize, manage and control a piece of this earth we call our garden? The obvious sensual pleasures of intriguing shapes and sizes, tantalizing colors, alluring fragrances and delicious produce often top the list. Yet our reasons for gardening run deeper than surface delights. So, let’s start digging.

But to begin, we need a tool—and the first one that pops to mind is the little graphic pyramid of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs I recall from Psych 101 many decades ago. With apologies to my scholarly friends in psychology for random musings on serious science, we’re ready now to unearth some of the “whys” of gardening.

Physiological
At the base of Maslow’s pyramid, our most basic human needs are physiological and, on this level, the answer to “Why?” is simple.

The earth has plants, and we need them for food and medicinal purposes to survive. Since the beginning of our time here on earth, we humans have gathered plant materials (grains, fruits, vegetables) wherever they grew in nature. We then began to cultivate them closer to home and livelihood, and small gardens evolved into farms.

Next, we leapt into agribusiness, biotech and chemical companies for mass-produced food and health products. And today, disillusioned with big business, many of us have joined the movement to return to growing our own fresh food, herbal remedies and ornamentals in home gardens and local farms.

Gardens also provide oxygen for the very air we breathe. In the 19th century, with increasing industrialization and concentration of masses of people in dirty, polluted cities in desperate need of air purification, Josep Fontserè, designer of the magnificent El Parc de la Ciutadella in Barcelona, noted that “gardens are for the city as lungs are for the human body.”

We gardeners know intuitively that gardens meet our need for fresh air and sunshine, exercise and mental rest for our health and well-being. Your Brain on Nature by Eva M. Selhub, MD, and Alan C. Logan, ND, actually provides scientific evidence on why we need nature for our “health, happiness and vitality.”

For some of us (including myself), we simply have a primal need to dig in the dirt—or in my case, red clay and mud. I’m no scientist, but I think it’s in our DNA.

Safety
Since the middle ages, walled and cloistered (and now fenced) gardens have offered protection from physical harm and loss of garden bounty to all sorts of predators—human and wildlife alike—to assure owners of meeting their need for security of their food supply. Thus, this brings us to “safety” as the next need in Maslow’s hierarchy.

Today we have laws and regulations to ensure the purity and safety of our food products and the prevention of ill-effects from chemicals. Yet gardeners who don’t trust big business are returning to growing their own in the belief that this is the safer and healthier choice.

Many gardeners are just trying to make a living. Gardens offer personal and financial security through employment for an entire sector of our economy in the food and green industries, from growers to distributors to sellers, and from local farmers markets and nurseries to grocery store chains and the big box stores. The economic impact of the environmental horticulture industry alone is estimated in the billions of dollars.

Gardens also meet our need for a psychological safety net, a sanctuary from cares, demands and threats of the world.

They serve as a retreat that engulfs body and mind into a safe place for mental health and healing.

Love and Belonging
With basic physical and safety needs met, we humans need connection with others and our gardens offer opportunity for friendship, family and intimacy. Literature through recorded history tells us how gardens meet the human need for love and belonging. In Victorian times, flowers were the language of love; a gift of bluebells meant kindness while tulips represented passion.

My garden club and master gardener friends are important to my well-being. We grow, give and exchange horticulture specimens, arrange flowers, share tips and commiserate in garden failures. We belong to each other in spirit and deed in our passion for gardening. This “belonging” means that we work together to share that passion in our community, pouring hours of our lives into garden education, conservation and restoration projects.

Gardens are also a place for living legacies. Mine includes daffodils passed down from generation to generation and as birthday gifts from Mom during the last years of her life, roses from cousin Patsy, mountain mint from sister Jan, garden phlox from neighbor Joyce, forget-me-nots from friend Susan, cleome from co-worker Linda and a Mother’s Day snowball bush from husband Tim.

It’s also a gathering place for family, where grown-ups revel in family ties that bind over dinner and a glass of wine, and kids run, jump, and play “hide and seek” and experience their first tea party.

Esteem
History is resplendent with extreme examples of royals and others whose need for acclaim and esteem resulted in flamboyant gardens equal to their extravagant edifaces. These are gardens that reflect wealth, power and control. Consider Versailles, Blenheim Palace or Hampton Court.

That ilk of gardener is all but gone, and many of the remaining showplace gardens of Europe, the United States and elsewhere are supported now not by personal or national wealth and control, but by public trust and tourism. These gardens continue to instill respect and esteem for their owners and managers.

Central Virginia gardeners and gardener lovers take pride in our public garden projects as well. We gain esteem from recognition of our hard work toward restoration and maintenance of the Old City Cemetery gravegarden, the Anne Spencer garden, Poplar Forest grounds and more.

Local gardeners enjoy and recognize each other’s garden successes, thereby satisfying what Maslow calls the need for esteem—respect of others and self-esteem. What gardener would deny feeling proud to be complimented on a prize winning daffodil, rose or tomato? Some of us can even satisfy this need by a few simple Facebook “likes” for a photo we post of a new bloom.

Self-Actualization
In his original hierarchy, the peak of Maslow’s pyramid was self-actualization, or “being the most you can be.” This is now recognized as an ethnocentric perspective unique to our individualistic culture. It conveys the basic idea of realizing one’s full potential after mastering the previous needs, and it tells us that the “why” of gardening is more than meeting physical, safety, love/belonging and self-esteem needs.
Michael Pollan, in Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education said, “A garden should make you feel you’ve entered privileged space—a place not just set apart but reverberant—and it seems to me that, to achieve this, the gardener must put some kind of twist on the existing landscape, turn its prose into something nearer poetry.” Or as Gertrude Jekyll, the famous English horticulturalist and garden designer, said, “Planting ground is painting a landscape for living things.”

My simple country garden, although never to be famous like the many designed by Gertrude Jekyll, is my artistic expression—an abstract expressionist painting of organic shapes and a riot of colors. Well, in truth, it’s more of a chaotic Jackson Pollack than a polished Gertrude Jekyll landscape. But, hey, it is what it is, and I can be!

For me, gardening and writing these musings meet personal self-actualization needs, hopefully with a benefit to others who may take pleasure in my garden and words, learn something new, see gardens in a new way or find inspiration to become a new gardener.

Self-Transcendence
Later in life, Maslow took his hierarchy theory a step further and added that “the self finds self-actualization in giving itself to some higher goal outside oneself, in altruism and spirituality.”

With altruism, self-actualization is realized in service to others without seeking benefit to self, as exemplified by master gardeners serving countless hours to instill in inner-city school children the value and benefit of gardens, raising food in urban deserts and sharing knowledge of gardens with others through the Speakers Bureau.

Members of The Garden Club of Virginia (GCV) also dedicate themselves to a cause that transcends individual self-actualization “to celebrate the beauty of the land, to conserve the gifts of nature and to challenge future generations to build on this heritage.” The GCV’s Historic Garden Week has raised millions of dollars for garden conservation and restoration projects across the Commonwealth, all for the public good.
I once read that “to nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul.” In 1918, Richardson Wright commented in House and Garden on the deep, quiet joy in gardening that grows outwardly from the heart. We gardeners know we serve only as bit players in the miracle of the transformation of a seed into a green leaf, bright flower or tasty fruit. But we do have a feeling when we’re grubbing in the dirt that we are “in at the creation” of something.

In our gardens we are transcended beyond self and are in touch with the spirit of place and our very souls. We have reached a holy place, our own Heaven on earth, Zen-zone, Nirvana. We know when this happens. And peace floods over us.

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WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHS BY SUSAN TIMMONS

Few professions have come under as much scrutiny as that of education. It’s easy to become lost in the bureaucracy of it all, debating salaries, testing standards and teacher accountability in abstract terms. But day-by-day, teachers are quietly showing up and teaching our children. While the world outside argues over teaching methods, a teacher is on the front lines—helping the boys and girls who need help with problem #4, providing a shoulder to cry on, lending a pencil when someone forgets their own once again, giving 75 cents for the lunch line and so much more.

Teachers should be celebrated for their commitment to a profession that demands so much of them for so little in return. But when you ask them, and as you’ll see in these profiles, the students make it worth it every time they have a victory, a “light bulb” moment, a good report. And you can’t put a price on that.

For their perseverance and dedication in the face of many challenges, we commend this year’s Top Teachers.

In our second annual Top Teacher awards, we had more reader nominations and votes than last year. Our top 10 educators represent a wide range of disciplines and grades, but they each share a passion for education. Learn more about them here.

Interviews by Jennifer Redmond
Photography by Mitchell Bryant, LaShonda Delivuk, & RJ Goodwin

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Most Voted Top Teachers

Caitlin Unterman
School: Forest Middle School

Years as an Educator: 4

Currently Teaches:
8th Grade Earth Science/ 8th Grade Science Exploration

Special Recognition:
U.S. Cellular’s “Calling All Teachers” Recipient

Educational Background:
Master’s Degree in Education

What led you to teaching?
I chose education as my career path because I love working with children; I am passionate about science, and I wanted to share my love of science with my students. The world of science is constantly changing, which makes it one of the most important topics for all of us to study.

What do you appreciate about being a teacher?
I appreciate the opportunity to make students believe that learning can be fun. I try to make sure my class is always interesting. Seeing the excitement on their faces when they walk into my science class is the best feeling any teacher can have.

What have you learned as a teacher?
I have learned that each and every student is different, and each has a desire to succeed; you just have to believe in them, instill confidence in them, and show them you appreciate their accomplishments—then they will show you how much they want to learn.

What do you want your students to learn?
I would like my students to learn that the opportunities waiting for them after they get out of school are
endless. With hard work, they can be and achieve whatever they want.

What one accomplishment are you most proud of?
I am most proud of the science exploration initiative that I created this year at Forest Middle School. We have partnered with NASA team members involved in the Mars Curiosity mission to provide our students a unique, one-of-a-kind educational opportunity.

What is one thing you would like others to know about education?
Being an educator is one of the most rewarding careers. That being said, it comes with great challenges. However, teachers are in the unique position of being able to have a lifetime impact on each and every one of our students.

From Her Nominations:
“Caitlin is an innovative and exciting educator. Among other things, she developed from scratch a Space Exploration course and got scientists from NASA directly involved; they will even be visiting the school to speak with her students.”

“Ms. Unterman has made an example of what can be done by thinking a little ‘out of the box.’ She is willing to try new ideas to keep her students on board. She may be young, but she is a dynamic teacher and a young lady to watch as her career unfolds.”

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Matthew Giles
School: Amherst Middle School

Years as an Educator: 8

Currently Teaches:
8th grade Pre-Algebra and Pre-AP Algebra 1

Special Recognition:
Profound Teacher Award in 2014 and 2015

What led you to teaching?
One day out of the blue when I was a junior in high school, my Aunt Natalie called me and told me she thought I would make a great math teacher. I gave it some thought, and since I loved math, loved to help people, and aspired to be a leader, I decided to go for it.

What do you appreciate about being a teacher?
I love waking up every day knowing that I have the opportunity to impact teenagers’ lives in a positive way. Also, I am a big 8th grader at heart, so I enjoy being with my students.

What have you learned as a teacher?
I have learned that establishing a rapport with my students and taking interest in their interests has not only allowed me to have great relationships with them but has also motivated the students to do well in math.

What do you want your students to learn?
Teaching math is important, but being a great role model, leading by example, and positively impacting students’ lives is the most important. At the end of the year, I want my students to be great problem solvers, know how to utilize 21st century technology, but most of all, be able to make wise decisions in life and, in turn, positively impact others’ lives.

What one accomplishment are you most proud of?
A recent initiative that I am most pleased with was the Pi Day Run at Randolph College last year. I had 26 students and colleagues join me in creating t-shirts with the digits of Pi on them and then running in a 3.14 mile race on Pi day (3/14/15). Running is one of my passions, so it was awesome seeing the students excited about running and math at the same time! Despite the rainy morning, we all had a blast and enjoyed some pie at the end of the run. I would like to make this an annual event for the students and faculty at Amherst Middle School.

What is one thing you would like others to know about education?
Education must be a team effort from all sides with all members upholding their responsibilities to allow students to learn, create and apply themselves at the highest level possible. Education is at its best when students, teachers, administrators, parents and the community collaborate together.

From His Nominations:
“Mr. Giles has mastered the art of not only knowing his content very well but also developing meaningful relationships with his students. They know that he not only cares for them and respects them but also
provides very high quality instruction on the daily.”

“Mr. Giles went out of his way to help my son adjust to being in a new school last year and has been very patient helping my son adjust to a new country since he was adopted from Europe. Outside of the classroom,
Mr. Giles offers encouragement to his students in helping with his church’s youth group and coaching soccer at the school.”

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Pat Rony
School:
Holy Cross Regional Catholic School

Years as an Educator: 3

Currently Teaches:
4th grade

Special Recognition:
Nominated for Tech/EDGE 2015 STEM Teacher of the Year

What led you to teaching?
After graduating from college, I became an educator in the business world as a corporate trainer. Later, I stopped working to start a family with my husband.

Once my children started school, I became more involved within their school. I volunteered to help in the classroom and eventually became a substitute teacher. A teacher told me I had a special way of working with the students and suggested that I should become a teacher.

After discussion with my family and prayerful consideration, I enrolled at Lynchburg College to earn my
teacher’s certification.

What do you appreciate about being a teacher?
I enjoy the interaction that I have with students. I greet the children every morning and have a personal interaction with them. In the classroom, I like to see the spark in their eyes when they finally understand a concept that they have been struggling with.

What have you learned as a teacher?
Every student doesn’t learn the same way. Each one is unique and has a style in which he or she learns the best. When teaching a lesson, I have learned that what I planned for the day may not be what will work best for the students. I have learned and practiced to adjust my thinking so they can grasp the concept to learn the best way they can.

What do you want your students to learn?
I want my students to be independent thinkers and not have to rely on me as a crutch to get their work done.
The students need to think it through to solve their problems in the classroom or on the playground.

What one accomplishment are you most proud of?
I am most proud of using the Nearpod app on Nook tablets in the classroom to make lessons more interactive, exciting and hopefully memorable. Nearpod is an “interactive, network presentation tool” that allows students to view teacher presentations on their own screens while I teach. They can also answer questions, draw images, take polls, view videos or visit web pages. I know immediately if the students understand the concepts, and I can re-explain for clarification if needed.

What is one thing you would like others to know about education?
Teaching is not just about sending students to school. It is a joint effort between the parents/guardians and the teacher. When that bond is present, the students are poised for success.

From Her Nomination:
“Pat Rony is a top teacher because she is an amazing role model as an excellent female STEM [science, technology, engineering, and math] teacher. She incorporates excellent STEM tools in her classroom and lessons and encourages my daughter to want to experiment and explore.”

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Cheri W. Falwell
School:
Liberty Christian Academy

Years as an Educator: 16

Currently Teaches:
6th grade English and History;
5th grade Bible and English

Special Recognition:
“Apple” Excellence Award recipient

What led you to teaching?
I believe each person has a special calling in life. For me, I felt led to become a teacher when I was a senior in High School. Teaching is my passion.

What do you appreciate about being a teacher?
The thing I appreciate most about being a teacher is the fact that I am able to be a part of helping to shape students into becoming the men or women God has called them to become in life. These children are our future generation. I am happy to be a part of their journey in getting there.

What have you learned as a teacher?
You are never too old to learn and become a greater teacher in order to better serve your students, and your students can teach you just as much as you teach them if you will allow it.

What do you want your students to learn?
I want students to realize their God-given potential and to live lives that glorify God in the spiritual, academic, social, physical and vocational realms.

What one accomplishment are you most proud of?
When I was a teacher at Forest Middle School (FMS), I loved the fact, and still do, that my students came and asked me to help them start a Bible club that would meet before school. Although I am no longer at FMS, the club has continued to carry on long after my absence. At LCA, each Valentine’s Day, I have my students follow Ephesians 4:32 “Be kind and compassionate to one another…” Each student receives a paper entitled, “Words of Encouragement from My Friends.” The paper is passed around the room, and each student writes something they like about each person in the room. I love to watch the smiles on each child’s face when they get the completed sheet back and read the things that each classmate thinks is special about that person. It just instills in each child’s heart that they were created to be a uniquely designed masterpiece.

What is one thing you would like others to know about education?
While there are so many things I would like others to see inside the heart and soul of a teacher, I will sum it up in a few words. Teaching is not just a 7:30-3:30 job. It is a calling—a passion—that drives me to work before the hours of the day begin and long after the day ends including weekends, breaks and summer. I pour my heart and soul into each lesson written and taught and each talk I have with my classes or individual students. I pray for my students, past, present and future. I want them to learn academically, but when they leave my room, I want each student to know how very much I love them and how very much Jesus loves them. This mission is not taken lightly but very seriously because it is my responsibility to prepare this next generation of future leaders. I want to leave my legacy in each of them just like I want to leave a legacy for my own son.

From Her Nomination:
“She’s not a top teacher, Mrs. Falwell is the top teacher. My daughter had her two years ago in 5th grade, which is when she was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. The compassion [Mrs. Falwell] showed towards our daughter was meaningful. She is vested in all of her students daily, keeps the parents informed and teaches so her students learn and retain knowledge.”

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Casey Wood
School:
E.C. Glass High School

Years as an Educator: 10

Currently Teaches:
12th grade English and Public Speaking

Special Recognition:
Psi Scholars Teacher of the Year Award 2014

What led you to teaching?
Outside of family, my teachers were the most influential people in my life. Some of my former teachers are now my best friends, and I hope that I can build relationships with students that are as meaningful as the ones that they have built.

What do you appreciate about being a teacher?
I like to learn as much as I like to teach, and I appreciate the fact that my students can teach me just as much as
I can teach them.

What have you learned as a teacher?
That everyone is fighting their own battle, and you should always approach people with kindness even if it is not reciprocated.

What do you want your students to learn?
I want my students to be confident and content enough with themselves to live a truly happy life.

What one accomplishment are you most proud of?
Last year, the E.C. Glass Rock Band was able to record an album in a professional recording studio. I am proud of this because I have been playing music all my life and never had this opportunity myself until my late 20s.

What is one thing you would like others to know about education?
There’s a lot more to an education than test scores and diplomas. Ask the students—they’ll be the first to tell you!

From His Nomination:
“Casey has inspired dozens, if not hundreds, of kids to pursue knowledge, reading, music and, most importantly, critical thinking, which I think is the number one requirement for succeeding at life.”

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Julia Wingfield
School:
Holy Cross Regional Catholic School

Years as an Educator: 22

Currently Teaches:
3rd and 5th grade; Title 1

Educational Background:
Masters of Education from Lynchburg College

What led you to teaching?
I came to this career after 10 years in retail. I had worked up to the level of Operations Manager of a retail store and worked part-time as a bookkeeper for a family business. I enjoyed both of those positions, but something was missing. I realized I wasn’t in positions that allowed for creativity. My family has several members who are in education, so I talked with them about the field. I began substituting to see how I might feel about teaching, and I really enjoyed the interaction with the children, watching them respond, and seeing the sparks as they figured out the world around them.

What do you appreciate about being a teacher?
In our school, we get to know the whole family. I appreciate the effort that families make to send their children to our school. I appreciate their trust in me to work with their child, and I appreciate that each child is unique and has something to offer his/her fellow students.

What have you learned as a teacher?
Less is more! The less I say and lead, the more the children say and lead.

What do you want your students to learn?
Life is about figuring things out. How can you think about a problem in several different ways? How can you use your resources?

How should you treat other people while problem solving?
What one accomplishment are you most proud of?
My greatest accomplishment is that I end each day and each year thinking to myself “I want to do this again.” I add more STEM activities each year to my repertoire, and I add more opportunities for students to learn from each other.

What is one thing you would like others to know about education?
Teachers love your children. We set high expectations for them. We are tough on them, and we fuss at them sometimes. We may have some hard conversations with you about your child. But nothing makes teachers more proud than seeing your child succeed. Last, but not least, let your child be a child. Children will learn to read and do math (I do encourage reading for pleasure and noticing math in everyday home activities), but try not to push your child ahead in reading and math. Let them enjoy their childhood.

From Her Nomination:
“Julia was my son’s first teacher at HCRS; she made the transition seamless for him. She is truly an unsung hero, responsible for moving things forward without any need for recognition or accolades; that’s why it would be great to recognize her! She is a master differentiator in the classroom, meeting various skill levels with ease and introducing new and different teaching methods all the time. She makes the classroom exciting and is a phenomenal classroom teacher, encouraging the children to challenge themselves and to always give their very best.”

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Ann Shenigo
School:
Holy Cross Regional Catholic School

Years as an Educator: 39

Currently Teaches:
5th grade and Drama Director (3rd grade, kindergarten and Director of Development in the past)

Special Recognition:
Athena Award nominee through the Lynchburg Regional Chamber of Commerce

What led you to teaching?
I started teaching swimming lessons [at a young age] and loved seeing the children excited when they reached their goals.

What do you appreciate about being a teacher?
The students and their desire to learn—they are like sponges. They want to know the “whys,” “whens” and “hows” of whatever topic we are talking about and how it relates to them.

What have you learned as a teacher?
Patience. We all learn at different speeds and so knowing at what pace a student will be successful is so important. Also, variety—my lessons change from year to year, and I hope—while improving as I learn—that new approaches and tactics will enable my students to feel that sense of accomplishment.

What do you want your students to learn?
We need to teach the basics, and teach them well, to provide solid foundations for our students. But we also need to be focused on technology where most of our future jobs are focusing. I am thrilled to have Chrome Books in my classroom that my 5th graders can use the entire year.

What one accomplishment are you most proud of?
I recently received a letter from a parent that said, “Your ability to instruct classes large and small, with such diverse abilities, is skilled and intentional to produce students that think critically, at high levels, and with solid moral foundations.”

What is one thing you would like others to know about education?
We are shaping our future leaders. It’s important for us to teach critical thinking, problem solving, time management and self-discipline as well as core subject areas.

When our Holy Cross students go on to college and into the work world, they have these core competencies to be successful and resilient.

From Her Nominations:
“If I had to establish a school of my own, I’m pretty certain that Ann Shenigo would be the first person I’d try to hire away from HCRS. She is, quite simply, one of the truly indispensable people who make HCRS all that it is.”

“She is an amazing educator! Creating wonderful, stimulating projects for the students
throughout the year and is well-respected and loved by her students. She has also directed plays for 20 years that sell out year after year.”

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Margaret Dowd Daniel
School: James River Day School

Years as an Educator: 35

Currently Teaches:
2nd grade; team leader
(1st and 5th grades in the past)

Special Recognitions:
1974 Freedom Foundation Teacher Award; William M. Walker Family Meritorious Teacher Award 2006

What led you to teaching?
There are two people who inspired me to become a teacher. One was my mother, and the other was my senior Government teacher, Mrs. Sawyer. My mom loved children her whole life. She taught children with Down’s Syndrome on Sundays during church services for parents in the community. This gave them time to attend their church.

Mrs. Sawyer was a “dream come true” teacher. I loved her style of teaching. She made government homework interesting. Not only did I tackle her assignments first, but I also put forth my best effort on projects. Mrs. Sawyer made learning fun, interesting and intriguing. Every student was special to her.

What do you appreciate about being a teacher?
Over the past 30 years, I have had the privilege to teach at James River Day School. Our curriculum is created by teachers and reviewed every year by a committee. One of the things I appreciate the most about being a teacher is the trust that has been given to me over the years to help maintain our strong curriculum.

What have you learned as a teacher?
There are changes in education that occur every 10 years or so. I have found that in order to stay vibrant and current in the field of education, I need to adapt to the changes. Also, respect for the teacher, student and parent is very important.

What do you want your students to learn?
I want students to learn good character and manners. These qualities will take a student a long way in life. Students today need to have good character, to be responsible and well-mannered. Also, students need to know it is ok to make mistakes. This is how we learn to be a better person by the mistakes we make and knowing how to correct them.

What one accomplishment are you most proud of?
There are three accomplishments of which I am the most proud. When I came to James River Day School, there were no plays for the lower grades. Now each K-4 class has plays, and the middle school has a drama program. Secondly, the Hall of States has been a real love of mine. Students choose a state at random, work on a booklet and project. They prepare a speech. On the Hall of States day, parents come and listen to their speeches and visit the hall, which displays their projects. Finally, this year I started planning STEAM [Science, Technology, Engineering, Math + Art] activities on Fridays. There is a task for the students to complete. They write in their journal about the project and then build it and elevate their work.

What is one thing you would like others to know about education?
Teachers are teaching our future leaders. Teachers need to listen to their students and give them time to express themselves. Students have so much to teach us and share. Change your lessons yearly and make sure that you provide as many opportunities for physical movement as possible during the day.

From Her Nomination:
“Mrs. Daniel has been in the profession for more than 30 years but constantly keeps things interesting and fresh. She is eager to learn new technology, try different teaching strategies and stretch her pedagogical practices. Her consistency and structure serve her 2nd graders well. At James River Day School, Mrs. Daniel is a fixture.”

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Michelle Burnett
School: Peakland Preschool

Years as an Educator: 20

Currently Teaches:
One Year Old class (kindergarten and 2nd grade in the past)

What led you to teaching?
Teaching was the only profession my mother warned me not to pursue. She was the secretary at Boonsboro Elementary School for almost 30 years. She saw firsthand how hard teachers worked, even when not getting the pay, nor the respect, they deserved.

But even though she didn’t want her own kids to go into the profession, she constantly talked about how teaching was the most important profession. She was the loudest cheerleader for teachers I ever knew. She was often heard saying, “Without teachers, there would be no other professions.” Needless to say, my mother had a huge influence on the way I view teaching.

What do you appreciate about being a teacher?
I appreciate the growth and maturity that I have the privilege of observing in my students. When I tell people that I teach one-year-olds, I can see the disbelief in their faces. It’s like they are thinking, “What can you possibly teach a one-year-old?” Every day, I am amazed at the skills that my students display in problem solving, intellect and empathy. It is incredibly humbling and gratifying when one of my parents says, “Wow! I didn’t know my child was capable of that.”

What have you learned as a teacher?
I once had a principal whose mantra was, “Sometimes you have to lose the battle to win the war.” As a 22-year-old, just out of college, I thought that was a ridiculous notion.

Now that I’m twice that age, I’ve seen the light. I’ve learned to keep my eye on the only thing that is important—the children. Pride has no place in the teaching profession.

What do you want your students to learn?
I want my students to feel like they are important—important to me, important to their community, and important to the world. Building self-worth has to begin at this very young age. I want their self-confidence to help them evolve into self-sufficient, caring individuals.

What one accomplishment are you most proud of?
I am so proud to be a member of the Peakland Preschool family. Being invited to teach here for the last 14 years has been my greatest accomplishment. It is a privilege to work in this environment with these students, parents and teachers. There is truly nothing I would rather be doing every day.

What is one thing you would like others to know about education?
Teachers care about their students more than most people realize. They work hard and put in numerous hours that no one sees. It is common for teachers to spend a great deal of their own money on supplies for their students and classrooms. Teachers are good people who are in this profession for all the right reasons.

From Her Nomination:
“Michelle is phenomenal in that she is patient …truly cares for each child and makes them feel special, and is always quick to hold and nurture each child as if they are her own!
Not only this, but she also really enjoys doing what she does; you can see it every time you have a conversation with her. I will forever
be grateful for the wonderful care she
has given both of my girls.”

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Tracy Foster
School:
Rustburg High School

Years as an Educator: 14

Currently Teaches:
10th Grade English and
10th Grade Pre-AP English

Educational Background:
Masters of Education in
Teaching and Learning

What led you to teaching?
I always wanted to be involved in a career that served others. I also enjoy helping students make important decisions that have long lasting effects.

What do you appreciate about being a teacher?
In the classroom, I appreciate the brief window of opportunity to teach young adults to think, analyze and communicate in a way that will improve their lives forever. In my work environment, I appreciate being surrounded by optimistic people who generously collaborate and celebrate successes of other students and colleagues.

What have you learned as a teacher?
A wonderful college professor told my class, “Make sure you remember that you are ultimately teaching students, not just a subject.”

I’ve learned that every student brings a strength to our classroom, and students learn more when they are convinced the teacher knows and believes in their strengths and cares about them individually.

What do you want your students to learn?
I want my students to know that learning is not about achieving a grade—it’s the application of knowledge that brings personal growth.

What one accomplishment are you most proud of?
I’m not sure that I’ve had a “great” accomplishment. I have tried to assess the needs of every student, to consistently instruct in a way that enables each student to learn successfully, and to challenge every learner in ways that bring both academic and personal growth. When I look back at the end of my career, I hope to feel a sense of accomplishment knowing that my small, consistent daily efforts made a significant difference in the lives of my kids.

What is one thing you would like others to know about education?
Teachers are the finest group of individuals I have had the privilege to know. I am surrounded by a team of educators who invest their time, talents, finances, energy, experience and emotion into the students with whom they have been entrusted. Teachers pour their lives into young learners and often gauge their own success by the successes of their students.

From Her Nomination:
“Mrs. Foster has by far been the most influential teacher I have ever had. She never fails to challenge her students in class and understands each of our strengths and weaknesses as individuals. She not only cares about our academic achievements but each of us personally as well. She provides a safe learning environment where we can open our minds to new concepts and ideas never thought of before.”

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Congratulations to All the 2015-2016 Top Teachers

Top Teachers 11-25:

Debra Serio
Jefferson Forest High School

Julie Mayhew
E.C. Glass High School

Mike Morris
Liberty Christian Academy

Mrs. Olivia Linn
Blue Ridge Montessori School

Naomi Marks
Liberty Christian Academy

Nicole Griffin
Liberty Christian Academy

Tony Mitchell
Holy Cross Regional Catholic School

Erin Spickard
Liberty Christian Academy

Page Miller
Perrymont Elementary School

Doug Smith
Virginia Episcopal School

Chris Nelson
Liberty University

James Mashburn
Liberty University: School Of Aeronautics

Jason Knebel
Virginia Episcopal School

Douglas Miller
Liberty University

Michael Hueber
College of Osteopathic Medicine at Liberty University

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Top Teachers 26-33:

Dr. Tad Hardin
Liberty University: School of Music

Michael Weigner
College of Osteopathic Medicine at Liberty University

Matt Johnson
Virginia Episcopal School

Ronnie B. Martin
College of Osteopathic Medicine at Liberty University

Jason Wells
College of Osteopathic Medicine at Liberty University

James Kribs
College of Osteopathic Medicine at Liberty University

Mr. Paul Randlett
Liberty University: School of Music

Eugene Patterson
College of Osteopathic Medicine
at Liberty University