Meet the Chapel Hill educator who is now the 2021 North Carolina Teacher of the Year
Eugenia Floyd, who started her career as a teacher assistant before becoming an award-winning teacher in Chapel Hill, is now North Carolina’s Teacher of the Year.
Floyd, a fourth-grade teacher at Mary Scroggs Elementary School, was announced as the 2021 Burroughs Wellcome Fund North Carolina Teacher of the Year at a ceremony Friday at the Umstead Hotel in Cary.
She had been among nine finalists for the award, along with Cecelia Sizoo-Roberson of Piedmont IB Middle School in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and Jeremy White of West Lake Preparatory Academy in Lincoln County.
Floyd started her career as a teacher assistant at Morris Grove Elementary School in Chapel Hill, where her family and friends observed she was a natural educator. She went on to earn her teaching license from N.C. Central University in 2013 and began teaching fourth grade that year at Mary Scroggs Elementary.
She was named the 2020-21 Chapel HIll-Carrboro City Schools Teacher of the Year in June.
Floyd serves as a mentor teacher at Mary Scroggs, helping her colleagues as they work with students during the coronavirus pandemic. The school district only recently resumed in-person instruction after having provided solely remote learning.
“We, as educators, face adversities daily,” Floyd wrote in her Teacher of the Year portfolio. “We put on our game faces and do the job that we are called to do. We put all of the adversities to the side, and we show up for our students.”
The challenges faced by the state’s teachers and the finalists for Teacher of the Year during the pandemic were also acknowledged Friday by State Superintendent Catherine Truitt.
“You found new ways to help the students you could no longer see in person,” Truitt said. “You improvised by creating new methods for teaching and engaging students. Teachers and school leaders went to extraordinary lengths so that students could continue learning and growing.”
In December, Floyd was named the Teacher of the Year for the state’s north central region, which includes Wake, Durham, Orange, Johnston and Chatham counties. That announcement was made at a ceremony at Mary Scroggs, with a parade in the carpool circle awaiting her when Floyd came outside to be surprised with the news.
Floyd is the first North Carolina Teacher of the Year from the Triangle since 2008, when Cindi Rigsbee of the Orange County school system won. Rigsbee went on to become a National Teacher of the Year finalist.
Floyd will spend the next school year traveling the state as an ambassador for the teaching profession. Her prize package includes $8,500 in cash, a leased car, a foldable laptop compuer and the opportunity to travel abroad in Africa.
