Excellent Educators is a WAVY-TV 10 initiative to celebrate local teachers who have gone above and beyond for their students and communities during the last academic year. These Excellent Educators were nominated by their school divisions. Congratulations to these educators for all of their hard work and accomplishments!
Name: Charity Thomas
Division: Northampton County Public Schools
Position: Algebra I and prealgebra teacher at Northampton Middle School
What the school division said about this Excellent Educator: Charity Thomas has served Northampton County Public Schools for 25 years. During this time, she has served as an educator in the TECH Center (alternative school), Northampton Middle School, and Northampton High School. Overall, this teacher has served countless students and families of the Eastern Shore.
Though Thomas has many standout qualities such as content knowledge, behavior management, and positive relationships with students, the one quality that stands out the most is her dedication to children. For instance, she has volunteered countless hours after school to offer additional instruction to struggling students. By providing additional assistance, students mastered content otherwise not mastered, which increased students’ self confidence, self worth, and mathematical knowledge. Plus, she has the best laugh!
WAVY-TV 10’s Julie Millet had the opportunity to interview this educator.
Charity Thomas’ colleagues tell WAVY 10 that the longtime math teacher is known for having “the best laugh.”
Turns out, she also has a good singing voice.
“Because music, [the students] remember. If you ask them to rap this certain song to you, they remember that,” she said.
The trick seems to be working. Thomas, who has been teaching with Northampton Schools for 25 years, uses songs to help her students remember the rules of mathematics.
“I use MC Hammer when solving equations. MC Hammer says, ‘Stop! You can’t touch this’ and then he says ‘da na na na, na na” and starts moving. So I always have them put the stop sign around the variable. Once you get the stop sign, by itself its divide or multiply,” she said.
Beyonce also makes the cut.
“She has that song ‘Irreplaceable.’ It says ‘to the left, to the left,’ but my song is ‘do the left, do the left, combine all likes terms to the expression to the left,” she said.
But that’s not all that makes Ms. Thomas special. The teacher is also a graduate of Northampton schools, where her mom was also a teacher. And her own kids attended Northampton Schools, too.
“I taught my children,” she said. “I was harder on them than the rest of the kids. My son couldn’t get away with saying, ‘Mom, I don’t have any homework.”
And through the years of ups and downs, Thomas ays what she loves most about teaching math – has stayed a constant.
“That’s what I love about it. You get back what you give,” she said.
