His Story
Jim Brooks has taught English at West Wilkes High School in the foothills of North Carolina since 1985. He teaches everything from Advanced Placement English to basic freshman English, and he holds every student to the same standard: rigor, relevance and relationship. Every lesson begins with an essential question that shows students why the work matters.
He brings the wider world into a small rural school. Guest speakers have included Holocaust survivors, storytellers from Ireland and Australia, survivors of the genocide in Rwanda, and poets, musicians and authors. Students study media and technology as critical thinkers, and they make their own films, including public service announcements for the North Carolina Highway Patrol and a documentary for a local health foundation’s dental clinic that helped raise $250,000.
Former students stay in touch for years. One, now a filmmaker, writes that Brooks’s passion “still informs my artistic process.” His principal says students call him “extremely challenging,” but also “fun and fair.”
Beyond the Classroom
Brooks has been a state and national voice for teachers. He served on teacher advisory committees for two North Carolina governors, on the National Education Association’s Commission on Effective Teaching and Teachers, and as a mentor to other teachers pursuing National Board Certification. He was the first teacher on his staff to earn that certification, and he renewed it in 2009.
His honors include the Terry Sanford Award for Creativity in Teaching (2005), North Carolina’s Award for Teaching Excellence (2006), the NEA’s National Award for Teaching Excellence (2007), and the North Carolina English Teachers Association’s Outstanding English Teacher award (2009). He has presented at conferences in France and Egypt, earned a Fulbright to study at the American Academy in Rome, and taught children one summer in the Republic of Georgia. He completed a doctorate in educational leadership at Appalachian State University in 2011, and he has said no to administrative jobs to stay in the classroom.
Philosophy Into Practice
Brooks writes that “education changes lives,” and he sees himself in each student: the reluctant learner who would like to fade into the background, the eager one who answers every question, and the one weighed down by pressures outside school. He argues that a teacher who believes in a student’s potential can show them what they could accomplish.
He coaches and sponsors clubs because “there is much to be taught and learned that cannot fit into a neatly ordered school day.” He also shares his travels with students “to give them a more global perspective,” so that learning is “not purely in a vacuum.”
“Often students would never dream of the things they could accomplish, if not for a teacher who challenged them with a vision of success.”— Dr. James A. Brooks
In His Own Words
“I adhere to the belief that education changes lives.”— Dr. James A. Brooks
“Once students know that I truly care about their well being and their future, they will willingly join me in the pursuit of learning.”— Dr. James A. Brooks
“It is my goal to rekindle the curiosity that my students once had so that learning will continue long after the student has left my classroom.”— Dr. James A. Brooks
What Others Said
“Simply stated, students always come first for Jim. What a teacher; what a human being!”— Stephen C. Laws, Superintendent, Wilkes County Schools
“I could think of few accomplishments worthy of such prestigious recognition NOT listed on the resume of Dr. Jim Brooks.”— J. Wayne Shepherd, Principal, West Wilkes High School
“Dr. Brooks was assigned as my mentor, and I have learned so much from him.”— Colleague, West Wilkes High School
“Students who have taken one of Jim’s classes feel like they have had a leader and a teammate.”— S. Cagney Gentry, former student
“I have seen the pain in his eyes when he speaks of the children he taught one summer in the Republic of Georgia and the hope in his voice when he talks of a student’s potential.”— Cathy Sebastian, retired colleague