Her Story
Leslie Revis was orphaned at the age of two and raised by grandparents who refused to let poverty and loss define her future. That early experience of being taken in, believed in, and never treated as “disadvantaged” became the engine of a twenty-eight-year teaching career that has carried her from a California high school classroom to Peace Corps posts in Guatemala and Belize, to a college department chair in North Carolina, and finally to Beaufort High School in South Carolina, where she has taught Spanish and led the Foreign Language Department since 1995.
Her résumé reads like a life spent gathering tools for exactly this work: certification in intensive language training at Dartmouth, in youth crisis intervention in New York and Argentina, in bilingual curriculum design for the Peace Corps, and, in the International Baccalaureate program, certifications that let her coordinate Beaufort High’s IB Community Action and Service requirement and Theory of Knowledge coursework. She has trained Peace Corps language coordinators from a dozen countries across Latin America, designed bilingual curriculum for a national publisher, and built an entire Spanish-immersion math and science program for Fairfax County, Virginia, sixth graders.
By the time she arrived in Beaufort, Revis had already spent two decades teaching in settings that ranged from an elite North Carolina day school to a GED program for adults. What she built in Beaufort, though, became the signature achievement of her career: a student-run Spanish translation service that grew, within two years, into a countywide institution recognized by the state Department of Education, the state Department of Labor, and the South Carolina Tomato Growers Association.
Beyond the Classroom
In January 1998, on a ten-mile drive to work, Revis found herself imagining a student-run Spanish translating service — a way to put her students’ language skills to real use in a Beaufort community whose Hispanic population was rapidly growing. Within a single spring semester, the Beaufort High School Community Outreach Translating Service (BHSCOTS) had logged more than 3,000 hours of volunteer translation for the Beaufort Fire Department, the Rape Crisis Center, Beaufort Memorial Hospital, the Department of Motor Vehicles, Citizens Opposed to Domestic Abuse, and a dozen other local agencies.
That first semester, her students desktop-published El Aguila, a free fifty-page Spanish-language reference guide for the area’s Hispanic families; a second, eighty-page volume followed a year later. Her students translated South Carolina’s new farmworker sanitation law for the Tomato Growers Association, translated United Way of Beaufort County’s entire 250-agency community services directory into Spanish, and translated patient-care information sheets for a local pediatric practice. The program was invited to present its model at the International Baccalaureate’s North American Regional Conference and at a statewide Minority Health Issues Conference, where a team of Revis’s students led a two-day institute for health professionals.
The recognition followed quickly: Beaufort County Teacher of the Year, South Carolina Honor Roll Teacher, a finalist for South Carolina Teacher of the Year, Disney’s National American Teacher Award for the Humanities, and honors from the state’s Department of Labor, Department of Health and Environmental Control, and Employment Security Commission — nearly all of it, in Revis’s telling, an unplanned byproduct of simply following her students’ dream to its conclusion.
Philosophy Into Practice
Revis teaches through two acronyms she built into the architecture of her classroom: L.O.V.E. — Listen, Observe, Value, Enjoy — for how she meets each student at the door, and H.E.A.R.T. — Humor and Excellence, built on Acceptance, Responsibility, and Trust — for how she runs the room itself. She organizes her classes into rotating stations rather than whole-group instruction, a shift that she says dropped her failure rate from fifteen percent to near zero.
“I am committed to each of my students with LOVE, HEART, and SOUL… my students have consistently taught me that I must meet them at the door with L.O.V.E.”— Leslie Revis, Philosophy of Teaching
Underneath the acronyms is a simpler conviction, one rooted in her own childhood: that students who arrive with “broken wings and tipped halos,” as she puts it, need to be met with acceptance rather than judgment before any learning can happen. She places 450 phone calls a year to students and parents, keeps a homework hotline open seven nights a week until 11 p.m., and insists that accountability is built one relationship at a time.
“Students are seeking from us an honest and meaningful connection… It says to the student, ‘You are the most important focus and I will not forget you!'”— Leslie Revis, Educational Issues
In Her Own Words
“At the age of two I was left orphaned. As I went through school, I sought to find my success in an environment riddled with poverty and economic despair… Every step of my journey has prepared me to take on courageous deeds.”— Who Are You
“When I was working for Peace Corps in Guatemala in 1992, life presented before me three desperately sick, but amazingly beautiful, orphaned Maya siblings. Though widowed and with three of my own teens, I brought the other three into my household, adopted them, and raised them to be thriving professionals in their community!”— Professional Biography
“I am a person committed to all students, not just my own… I chose to jump in. This meant I would be teaching not only my six classes, but adding another five to my load, all while being six months pregnant.”— In the Classroom
“My classroom is covered in my students’ artwork… Ours is an active relationship of growth and love. We are together to learn Spanish, but our greatest, most joyous reason for coming together is to share of our hearts!”— Outside the Classroom
“My students are worth being every bit a part of my life!”— Who Are You
What Others Said
“Many teachers offer extra time and attention to some students but with Leslie everything she does seems to help not only individual students but classes, the school and the community — all at the same time.”— Elizabeth S. Chase, Communications Specialist, Beaufort County School District
“For four years, I have been a part of a learning experience that has had a significant impact on me… She has set the example and shown us students that knowledge is the light to the world.”— Rebecca Ann Daubert, Former Student, Beaufort High School
“I could go on about this most remarkable person. Please accept this recommendation to consider Leslie Revis for the National Teacher Hall of Fame. She would be a most worthy member.”— Dr. Joseph H. Floyd, Pediatrician, School Board Member and Parent
“We are very thankful for Leslie’s hardwork and dedication, as well as her students who are getting an opportunity to make a difference in our community.”— Brandy M. Gray, Director of Agency & Community Services, United Way of Beaufort County
“Leslie Revis is a true champion and should be admitted to the National Teacher Hall of Fame… Truly, she has taken the ordinary tasks of teaching and crafted them to transform her students into a self-actualized learning community.”— Sally Mayse, Director, School to Work, Beaufort County
“For over twenty-five years, Leslie has been sharing that passion with students. To them, she’s more than a teacher. When she stands in front of her classroom, there’s a sparkle in her eyes that communicates that she cares.”— Inez M. Tenenbaum, State Superintendent of Education, South Carolina
“Even a brief five minute conversation with Ms. Revis gives evidence of her extraordinary respect and concern for her students… We in Beaufort consider her to be a ‘most valuable player.'”— Nancy Thomas, Supervisor of Staff Development, Beaufort County School District