Pinkowski's 20 years teaching - Wayne-Wilson News Leader, Fremont, NC

07 February 2008 — In the classroom, Shelly Pinkowski teaches her students to set high goals for themselves, and work hard to achieve them. But Shelly also leads by example, striving for the best in her own life as well.

This past fall, Shelly was the only teacher at Charles B. Aycock High to earn National Board Certification. Last spring, she decided to pursue the certification. Over several months she completed the rigorous application process, which requires a portfolio of class activities, videos of her classes, documentation of teaching accomplishments, and a test. After submitting the application in March, Shelly had to wait until November to hear from the committee that she had earned the distinction.

This year is Shelly’s twentieth year teaching high school English. She has spent the last twelve years at Charles B. Aycock, and taught at Clayton High School for the first eight years of her career.

She said looking back, it seems that she always knew on some level that she wanted to teach. She said that even as children she and her sister, who also teaches, would always play school.

“I was always the teacher,” she said. “I had these old spelling and reading books, and I’d always teach from those when we played.”

But a conscious decision to pursue a teaching career happened when she was in the tenth grade. That year, she said, she was inspired by her own teacher and fell in love with English.

“From that point on, I decided that’s what I was going to do,” she said.

After graduating, Shelly earned her degree from Campbell University and began teaching in Johnston County, where she grew up.

This year, Shelly is teaching eleventh and ninth grade English, but she has taught a little bit of everything during her career. In addition to standard and honors level courses in writing and literature, Shelly also served as the yearbook advisor for several years and taught journalism.

Teaching, she said, is a new adventure everyday. What she enjoys most about the adventure of teaching is the opportunity to form relationships and watch students grow.

“Every day is something different,” she said. “You’re getting to build relationships with new students every semester, and you’re seeing students grow. It’s very fulfilling to see them grow over the semester.”

She said her teaching style has changed over the years as she has learned the best way to communicate with her students while keeping them interested.

“I think I’m stern but fair,” she said. “We have a good time learning, but the students know I mean business.”

In addition to classroom duties, Shelly also coached the cheerleading squad for several years, which kept her busy on the sidelines Friday nights while her husband Randy coached the football team. But as the Pinkowski family began to grow, Shelly’s time on the sidelines switched to keeping an eye on her kids.

Shelly and Randy have five children, ranging in age from 17 years old to two months. Shelly’s stepdaughter Madison is a senior at Aycock this year, and seems to have caught the teaching bug from her parents. She will attend the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and has applied for a Teaching Fellows Scholarship. She hopes to teach history.

Haley, 9, and Sara, 6, are students at Northwest Elementary. Tyler, the only boy in the family, is four. The newest arrival to the family is Anna, who was born just before Christmas.

Shelly’s ability to manage her large family while continuing to strive for new successes in her career inspired one of her colleagues to describe her as a “superwoman.” But Shelly shrugs off the compliment.

One aspect that makes things easier, she said, is that she and her husband work at the same school. The two have worked together for all but two years of their marriage, and Shelly said that they’ve always enjoyed teaching together. Now that the kids are getting older, she says it makes the logistics of getting everyone to school a lot easier.

“We all ride to school together in the morning, and when it’s not football season, we all get to go home together in the evening,” she said.

Though the Pinkowskis live in Johnston County, Shelly said that her kids are enrolled in Wayne County Schools both because of convenience and because of the merits of the system. She explained that the family lives in the home that Shelly grew up in, an aspect that she loves.

And though she said the Pinkowskis will probably never move to Wayne County because of her roots, she and her husband still love Aycock, and she plans to continue motivating her students there for years to come.

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Issue of 7 February 2008

Wayne Wilson News Leader
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