Mentor Teacher of the Year is ‘Mama Poole'

She’s known as “Mama Poole.”

She’s better known as a compassionate, mothering, nurturing and exceptional teacher and mentor, according to colleagues.

Barbara Poole, an English teacher at Jacksonville High School, was recognized Tuesday by the Onslow County Board of Education as its 2010 Mentor Teacher of the Year.

JHS Assistant Principal Angela Garland said Poole is an incredible asset to the mentoring program.

“Her door is always open to her kids and to our baby teachers,” Garland said. “She is a ready resource for advice, to listen and be a sounding board. She is the voice of reason — she does not give them the answers, but helps them grow and find their own solutions.”

Last year she was assigned to mentor one new teacher. In the end, she was advisor to three — the three who nominated her for consideration as Mentor Teacher of the Year, said C.J. Korenek, director of human resources.

“Reading their recommendation, she was head and shoulders above the rest,” Korenek said. “It just wowed you. She exemplifies what is best about our mentoring program.”

It did not take Amber Cluver, a world history teacher, long to realize how lucky she was that Poole was assigned as her mentor.

“Being a brand new teacher, days bring stress and life gets overwhelming at times, but Mrs. Poole is always there to lend a hand,” she wrote in the recommendation.

She said Poole not only mothers new teachers, but her students as well.

“She provides an exceptional example for new teachers to look to when establishing their own classroom,” she said.

Edward Sabat, a new math teacher, said Poole took him under her wing and always found time to fit him in.

“Anything I needed she was always there; she is so caring, motherly and nurturing — it is the essence of her,” he said Friday. “She would always check on me to see if I was surviving my first year as a teacher.”

Poole also mentored Samantha Gamble, who could not be immediately reached for comment.

Poole has been in education for more than 30 years, and has been teaching at JHS two years. She spent 10 years working with the Cumberland County Schools Web Academy, which laid the foundation for the North Carolina Virtual Public School, the state online program.

While teaching at Seventy First Senior High School in Fayetteville, she helped start its mentoring program.

“There was no formal system to observe and support new teachers,” she said. “I saw there was a need and talked to the principal about creating something.”

She wanted to be a mentor because she remembers what it was like when she was a new teacher in the 1970s.

“There were five of us and we had to support each other — we were like five little monkeys clinging together in a cage,” she said.

She said mentoring is very rewarding.

“I do it because it’s a profession I love — I retired but yet was not finished — I love teaching, love working with kids,” she said. “I want (new teachers) to look at it as a profession. We often don’t do enough to keep good teachers in the classroom.”

She also learns from the teachers she mentors, she said.

“They’ve got all the tech stuff, so when I need to figure something out I can go to them,” she said. “And I look at some of the things they use in the classroom — they bring the new ideas and I get to steal them.”