Crystal's kids growing up - Wayne-Wilson News Leader, Fremont, NC

30 August 2007 — As she begins her third year teaching the occupational course of study at Charles B. Aycock High School, Crystal Casey feels she has her program and her students heading in the right direction.

Evidently, her fellow teachers agree.

Crystal was voted by her peers as Aycock's Teacher of the Year for the 2007-2008 school year. Though she has been named Teacher of the Year twice before in her 14-year career, Crystal said earning the honor this time, at Aycock, was especially meaningful because she has been with the school such a short time.

“It’s a tremendous honor,” she said. “With it only being my third year here, I feel like the staff have a lot of belief in me and my program.”

Crystal teaches the occupational course of study, which serves special needs students at the high school level. She describes the program as a self-contained setting for teaching high school skills, but the program is unique in that her students actually graduate with high school diplomas. Before the current program, with its different career tracks for earning a high school degree, was put in place, special needs students earned only a certificate for completing the program.

In addition to learning the standard curriculum – math, English, science, and social studies – the students also must complete a set number of work hours in order to earn the occupational degree. Each of Crystal’s students must complete 360 paid hours of work, along with 300 school-based hours and 240 community-based hours. They can remain in school until the age of 21, if they need more time to complete the program.

“The program prepares them to enter the world of work when they graduate,” said Crystal. “Ideally, we’d like to have a job lined up for them when they graduate.”

To earn school-based hours, the class has instituted a business that they run on Aycock’s campus, called Outback Café Services. The business provides snacks and sandwiches for teachers to purchase. The students help prepare the food and deliver it to teachers on the campus.

“They run the business,” she said. “They restock, compare prices, and make deliveries to the staff members.”

Students also help out with other various tasks around the school, including making copies in the office, helping custodians clean the baseball and football fields after games, and helping to prepare meals for the football and basketball teams before home games. Crystal said this year the class will probably be laundering the uniforms for the football team, as well

“The different jobs just give them a wide variety of skills,” she said, which makes the students more employable after graduating.

Crystal is dedicated to helping her students and the program succeed. The occupational program is actually the reason she began teaching at Aycock.

Crystal graduated from Aycock in 1988. She went on to East Carolina University, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in 1992, and her master's in learning disabilities in 1994. She came back to the area to teach at Fremont STARS, where she spent the first 12 years of her career.

But Crystal always said that if the occupational course position came open at Aycock, she was going to go for it.

“I loved working at Fremont, and I actually had envisioned moving over to Aycock when my kids were older,” she said. “But when I got a call saying that the program had an opening, I knew I had to go for it.”

Crystal still stays in touch with friends at Fremont, because her children, Landon, 9, and Morgan, 6, attend school there. Many of her students from Fremont are now her high school students.

“I’m teaching a lot of the same kids,” she said. “It’s really good to see them grow up. They’re very dear to my heart.”

Crystal said she and her students are almost like a family, and they take joy in sharing celebrations with each other.

“Over the summer, I had one of my kids call and leave me a message that said , ‘I need to talk to you, Mrs. Casey. Please call me,’” she said. “When I called back, he told me that he had finally passed Driver’s Ed. I asked him if I needed to stay off of the roads.”

When she isn’t busy with her class, Crystal is usually spending time with her own children, and her husband Mark. She said she likes to go to the beach and enjoys shopping, as well as attending “lots of baseball games” with her kids.

Crystal is a member of Stoney Creek Church, where she currently teaches adult Sunday School, and is about to begin teaching a children’s class as well.

“In other words, my plate is pretty full,” she said.

But Crystal is beginning to see the fruits of her labor at Aycock, as she watches students she’s known for many years begin to graduate.

“We had three girls graduate this year with a high school diploma,” she said. “It’s just so good to get to watch them graduate. When you’re at elementary school, you get them started, but now I’m getting to see the end result.”

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