Assistant Professor Jenn Ayscue Receives 2021-22 Fantastic Teacher Award

From the time she was young, NC State College or university of Education Assistant Professor Jenn Ayscue needed to pursue a vocation in education and learning.

She typically played college with her sister as a youngster and felt the affect of quite a few amazing instructors all through her everyday living before getting an elementary faculty instructor herself and in the long run joining the College or university of Schooling college.

Now, her influence as an educator is getting regarded with NC State’s 2021-22 Fantastic Teacher Award, which acknowledges artistic and revolutionary instructing and mastering techniques. Faculty must be nominated for the award by both of those friends and college students. 

“I am honored and humbled to be selected for this award. I understand so substantially from my pupils and am constantly impressed by their activities, knowledge, leadership and enthusiasm for instructional equity and justice,” Ayscue reported. “I feel privileged to be component of a faculty exactly where my colleagues and I collaborate and share thoughts to bolster our educating procedures. To be recognized for my educating by my college students and colleagues, whom I regard deeply, implies so considerably to me.” 

Via her do the job as a K-12 instructor, Ayscue witnessed inequities and segregation in the instruction system and was inspired to pursue a Ph.D. and go on her operate in schooling by investigating desegregation and integration in schools. 

She also techniques her educating in a way that strives to develop an inclusive community that honors and centers the range of students’ backgrounds and ordeals. 

“I hope my students develop the expertise and capabilities they will need to believe critically and to handle what they understand to be the most urgent challenges in education through their scholarship and professional follow,” she said. 

One particular of Ayscue’s most loved times as an educator in the College or university of Training was finding the option to produce a training course that concentrated on education and civil rights. She to start with taught this system throughout the Spring 2021 semester, all through a time when she said there appeared to be important national functions – like the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, the presidential inauguration and the summary of the Derek Chauvin trial – transpiring on an just about weekly foundation.  

“Having the possibility to facilitate conversations and studying pursuits and join our course products to the functions unfolding all around us was a profound experience for me,” Ayscue reported. 

The knowledge shipped through the course was described by both college students who nominated Ayscue for the Fantastic Instructor Award. Ayscue reported her favored moment of the class happens at the conclusion of each semester, when she asks students to share reflections about how to shift forward with addressing education and civil legal rights in North Carolina.

“It is impressive to listen to the awareness and eyesight our pupils have for making bigger justice and fairness in our condition,” she stated. 

A different instructing experience Ayscue has valued is the opportunity to instruct numerous sections of the Qualitative Exploration Techniques in Training class, which delivers collectively college students from numerous College of Education and learning courses, as nicely as some learners from other faculties on NC State’s campus. 

“Having college students with these diverse pursuits and qualifications experiences enriches the learning setting,” she said. “I totally take pleasure in watching pupils as they begin or go on on their exploration journeys and master about qualitative ways to checking out the subjects they treatment about deeply.”