Becky began as a program consultant with the NC Center for Resilience & Learning in 2019, currently primarily serving Lee County. Becky came to the Center with 30 years of experience working in schools. Having grown up in a family of teachers, Becky started her career as a high school English teacher in her home state of New Jersey, and earned her Master’s Degree in Social Work from UNC Chapel Hill shortly after moving to North Carolina in 2000. Along the way, she has been a school-based interventionist on several projects while working for Duke University’s Center for Child and Family Policy. These projects included developing and implementing curricula devoted to violence prevention, alcohol and tobacco use prevention, high school dropout prevention, and most recently on social and emotional learning in preschool classrooms. When Becky joined the Center team, she felt like her entire career had been preparation for this work of helping to create schools where all students feel safe, heard, seen, and valued for who they are.
She lives in Carrboro with her husband Michael and two sons, Caleb and Archer.
I come from a family of teachers: my Mom, Dad, stepdad, grandfather–all of them found meaning, purpose, and joy in the classroom, the lecture hall, the resource room, or the marching band field and concert stage. It was clear to me from an early age that I would follow in their footsteps. I started out teaching high school English in my home state of New Jersey and quickly discovered that the job was less about discussing novels, plays, and poems, and more about forming connections with the students in front of me. The moments that stayed with me the most were when kids would stay after school to talk with me about what was happening in their lives. Whether they were grieving the loss of a parent, struggling to overcome an eating disorder, grappling with depression, or just stopping by to share some news, making those connections outside of the classroom was so rewarding that I knew I wanted to change the course of my career.
After I’d spent about a decade teaching, my husband and I relocated to NC in 2000 and I decided to get my Master of Social Work (MSW) so I could be a school social worker. I wanted to help kids who, for whatever reason, felt “stuck” and like they couldn’t succeed or couldn’t make it through. I wanted to help them get unstuck. I graduated from the UNC School of Social Work in 2010, but the school social worker job wasn’t meant to be. Life threw me an enormous curveball in the person of my beloved first-born son, who has severe developmental delays and disabilities. Seven years after his birth, my younger son came home from Guatemala after a protracted two-year adoption process. My oldest son’s needs determined that I couldn’t work full time, however, I have put that MSW to work in other ways, and always in the service of teachers and by extension, their students. Before having the great fortune to join the Resilience & Learning Project here at the Public School Forum of NC in 2019, I had been involved in several school-based interventions ranging from violence prevention at the middle school level to supporting social and emotional competence in the pre-K classroom by training and coaching pre-K teachers in five NC counties. The work I’m doing now for the Forum feels to me like the perfect culmination of everything I’ve done to date.
The Passion Behind the Work
Teachers are often talked at or talked down to by people who themselves have never taught. People don’t feel entitled to tell surgeons or lawyers or engineers how to do their jobs, but EVERYONE has an opinion about how teachers should be doing their jobs differently or better. When I left the classroom, I had this idea that I could be the intermediary between teachers and all those who sought to influence how they do their jobs. I knew what it was like to be “ON” all day without the freedom to visit the restroom when you need to. I knew the relentlessness of the workload: the week nights, weekends, and spring vacations devoted to preparation and grading; the challenge of dealing with disruptive behaviors in class; the decision fatigue on any given day; and the need to differentiate instruction among a class of 20-30 students with a wide range of needs and learning styles.
Now, with the Resilience and Learning Project, as a Resilience Coach in a school, my job is not to tell teachers what to do. Instead, our program trusts teachers as experts and we enter into true collaboration with our partner schools with one common goal: to create a school environment in which every child feels safe and therefore able to learn. We are there to support, encourage, and facilitate change that benefits all students–not to dictate it. This is quite different from a lot of professional development that teachers experience. Teaching is a craft and an art, and good teachers know and understand that they are never done learning. I am passionate about supporting them on their journeys, and seeing their changes in practice produce concrete benefits for both their own and their students’ growth and development.
What is my “Why?”
As the proud parent of two very “outside of the box” children, I understand the perspective of both teachers and caregivers when it comes to trying to meet the needs of kids who struggle in school. I know the feeling of overwhelm and panic that BOTH parents and teachers feel when they don’t know how to manage challenging or confounding behaviors in a child entrusted to their care. I know the feelings of frustration both groups feel, and the fear that others (parents, supervisors, colleagues) will conclude from our struggle that we have failed at our primary task of preparing our children or students to succeed in life by giving them the necessary tools. I have seen the magic that occurs when the “whole” child is deeply understood and loved for exactly who they are and when every small victory is a cause for joy and celebration. I have seen this both personally with my own child and professionally when a teacher shifts from a “What is wrong with that kid” mindset to “How can I help that kid? What’s getting in her way?” I want schools to be places where every child feels like they truly belong and where children are not viewed as the sum total of their test scores but as complex, unique, and valuable members of a community of learners. That is my “why” and that drive is why I love the work I do.