This year’s NC Teacher of the Year is from a Triangle school. Meet the winner.
An English teacher at Chapel Hill High School has been named the 2023 North Carolina Teacher of the Year.
Kimberly Jones, a Harnett County native, was selected as finalist in December when she was named the 2023 Burroughs Wellcome North Central Region Teacher of the Year. Just a few months prior, she was named the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School district’s Teacher of the Year.
Jones will receive a number of prizes and opportunities along with her award, including a cash award of $7,500.
The ceremony announcing the winner was held in Cary on Friday.
“As an African American woman from a single parent, rural, working class background, I know firsthand the transformative power of education and the impact of hard-working educators to change lives,” Jones said from the podium in a teary-eyed acceptance speech.
“Learning changes lives. I see it everyday in the faces of my students who come from all walks of life but share a common desire for a bright and meaningful future. It is my privilege to help them achieve that future one day and one lesson at a time.”
Recognized teachers at Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools
Jones’ win marks the second time in three years a Chapel Hill-Carrboro teacher has won the state title, following Eugenia Floyd’s win in 2021. Floyd teaches the 4th grade at Mary Scroggs Elementary.
Jones’ selection as a regional finalist was the third consecutive year a teacher from the Chapel Hill-Carrboro district won the North Central Teacher of the Year award, following East Chapel Hill High School’s Brian Link’s win in 2021 and Floyd’s in 2020.
“The work ahead is about listening to and collaborating with the parents and caregivers who trust and support us in our efforts to educate their children,” Jones said in her acceptance speech.
“Above all, it is about serving the 1.5 million beautifully diverse students in our state who inspire us every day to plan with purpose, instruct with passion, and guide them with principal in the successful pursuit of their dreams.”
Jones’ teaching passions
Following her graduation from Wake Forest University, Jones began teaching right away at 23 years old. She is in her 17th year of teaching in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools.
“As a humanities teacher, I firmly believe that what is past does not have to be prologue. Every day we have the power to change the future, to teach the struggles and the crises of our past, but more importantly to equip our young people to create a better and more just world,” Jones said last June, Chapelboro reported.
Jones teaches her students about the Holocaust every year, devoting a full academic quarter to study historical and contemporary civil rights issues.
“I am able to study the Holocaust and also help my students see the patterns of oppression, the foundations of oppression,” she told TOLI, a Holocaust studies nonprofit, last year.
“If we can understand the past and make connections to the present and make it better for the future, that’s the point of what we do as educators.”
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