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: Megan Fettrow
Division: Gloucester County Public Schools
Position: Special education teacher at Botetourt Elementary School
What the school division said about this Excellent Educator: Megan Fettrow goes above and beyond to collaborate with teachers. She builds positive working relationships with families and she does amazing work with our students. She provides them with the support they need, but also holds them accountable for their learning. It’s amazing to watch. She serves as our SPED representative and is putting in extra time mentoring our contracted special education teacher. She is diligent about tracking data and making changes to instruction and is always beyond prepared to discuss student progress/data in meetings. She is just all around great!
WAVY News 10’s Raven Payne met up with Fettrow at her school and filed this report:
To Megan Fettrow, the most important part of her teaching is connecting with her students.
“Having a pulse on all the students at all times it really hard, but I think I just pride myself in making sure I make a good relationship with students so I can understand how best they learn, and I take it day by day,” said Fettrow.
Fettrow has been teaching special education at Botetourt Elementary for nine years and her love for it started early.
“When they broke it down for us in college it was really interesting and fascinating that students might not get something right away the first time,” she said. “They just might process things a little bit differently and that was fascinating to me.”
She teaches 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders.
She said one of the key aspects of teaching children with learning disabilities is slowing down and understanding how they best learn.
“We break things down a lot into smaller parts and make sure that I check in very frequently. We know these students have challenges, but they can achieve and do things; they just need the support.”
As the school year is winding down, she worked to get her students ready for end of year exams, learning reading comprehension skills and the difference between fiction and non-fiction.
“When a student gets something, and they smile.” She said that’s when she knows all the hard work and effort she puts into teaching her students is all worth it.
