Fincastle, Va. – She’s a leader, and a mentor for new teachers coming into her school-- and an education powerhouse bringing Fine Arts to life in Botetourt County.
Art is often times the medium in which emotion is expressed. At Central Academy Middle School in Fincastle, art class would take an emotional turn.
From art to something of an economics class, people carrying giant checks entered the classroom to honor November’s Education Impact Award winner, art teacher Courtney May.
“Art can be anything --and it’s the inborn natural reason that kids want to create. Everybody’s born with a desire to create something and everybody’s ‘something’ can be different. But art goes into a lot of different professions. You think of clothes people wear, that’s design. You think of video games kids are into now, that’s design. All things derive from art. Chairs we use, houses we live in-- so I try to push that in the kids. That’s not the only thing just our ‘fine arts’ is not the only thing, the only art. There’s all types of art that that they can go into,” May explained.
The CTE-Fine Arts-Foreign Language Department lead has been at CAMS for a decade. This year May has been named Central Academy’s Teacher of the Year for her unending commitment to her students and the school’s art program. She initiated a National Junior Art Honor Society at CAMS and spearheads fundraising for the art department. Her passion has generated an unmistakable interest in art.
“One of the biggest things I see is we’re going through course registration right now. The thing that happens every single year is we try to cap her classes at about 20 per class. Inevitably every year we end up bumping it up to about 22 or so because it fills up! We have about 80 spots over this course of a year in eighth grade art classes and we end up having 90-some kids that want to take art and I think that in itself, just student interest, shows the passion, because she drives the passion in our students,” said Jordan Pinkard, the Central Academy Principal.
Blue Eagle Credit Union awards $250 to both the winner, and her school. It’s part of a bigger commitment by the company to both education and community.
“Not only was the nomination just speaking volumes about who she is as a person, as a teacher, as a mother-- just passionate about what she does. She received more than 40 nominations so it was just really a no-brainer for her (to win),” said Laurissa Thompson, the Blue Eagle Credit Union Director of Marketing.
Prior to CAMS, May spent 13 years teaching at Breckenridge, Eagle Rock and Buchanan Elementary schools, all in Botetourt County. There is nothing more ‘truly artistic’ than to love people, and May’s love of the kiddos of Botetourt is a masterpiece indeed.