Chapel Hill High School has welcomed over 20 new faculty members this school year, the largest number of new teachers the school has seen in principal Charles Blanchard’s five-year tenure.
“We had a few folks move away. We’ve had weddings; we’ve had people move into administrative positions; and we’ve had retirees,” Blanchard said of the turnover this school year.
The Career and Technical Education (CTE) department has filled the largest number of vacancies, welcoming four new teachers: Robert Bourgeois, Jeffrey Gates, Gabrielle Rice and Justin Williams.
The math department has welcomed three new teachers: Tyler Cochrane, Emily Kabbe-Abayomi and Kaili Saffran.
Saffran, who also coaches the school’s field hockey team, teaches Standard Math 2 and Honors Math 3/Precalculus Block. She said she has always had a passion for math and teaching and believes part of that came from coaching tennis for six years.
“I always loved working with kids, teaching them everything they need to know about tennis, and I wanted to apply that using my degree,” she said.
The English department added one new teacher, Matthew Spencer, who taught the past 14 years at Northern High School in Durham. He teaches both Standard and Honors English 12 in his new role. Spencer said he took the new position seeking a new challenge, noting that Chapel Hill High School has been a welcoming environment for him.
“My colleagues here are really wonderful. [They are] very warm and helpful,” he said.
Two new teachers have been added to the science department: Courtney Byrd and Allison Kauffman.
Byrd teaches Honors Biology and Honors Chemistry, and Kauffman teaches chemistry classes. They both graduated from UNC’s graduate school of education last year and expressed satisfaction working together as colleagues.
“It’s just great to have someone who is also a new teacher who also I knew before, at the same school, and we can bounce ideas off each other,” Kauffman said.
Byrd said she is excited to be teaching biology and sharing with students the latest scientific developments in her field.
“There are always new discoveries that are happening and you just always have to stay on top of things,” she said. “It’s never going to be boring because there’s always something new to learn.”
The social studies department has added three new teachers in Megan Brinkman, Christopher Sager and Dylan Wood.
Wood, who also coaches the school’s track team, filled an open AP Psychology position, but was originally going to teach history; he said he has wanted to teach since the seventh grade.
“I think I’m uniquely positioned to help people every day, and that’s something I’ve always wanted to do,” Wood said.
Brinkman, who teaches both standard and honors world history and the new Economics and Personal Finance course, previously taught high school in Washington state. She said she loves the flexibility and relevance of her curriculum and sharing that with high school students.
“I like the ideas behind social studies, where you can do a lot of the kind of higher level thinking of creating arguments and setting facts. I also like the range of social studies material, so you can have disciplines of art and music, as well as all of the historical documents,” she said.
Christopher Sager teaches Civics and AP United States Government and Politics after previously teaching in Wake County Schools. He noted that his new teaching position is much more collaborative than his previous job.
“I’m more interactive with people in social studies that are out here. I’ve also interacted with a lot in English,” he said.
The physical education department has two new teachers: Adam Arounerangsy and Kelly Moyer. Arounerangsy is working with the school sports teams on their strength and conditioning.
Kahlila Brown has joined the Cultural Arts department as the new dance teacher, replacing previous instructor Liza Parker.
Brown teaches all dance levels at Chapel Hill High School and knew she wanted to dance when she entered college. She was introduced to teaching after taking a dance education course as part of her university major.
Though she applied for jobs in Durham, Brown said she knew she wanted to work at Chapel Hill when the dance position opened up.
“I thought, oh yeah, this is what I’ve been looking for,” she said.
