Dozier-Libbey Medical High School- 2012 Winner
Stacey Wickware teaches advanced placement history, government and medical ethics at Dozier-Libbey Medical High School, a pathway school in Antioch for teens who want to pursue health-related careers.
Ms. Wickware describes herself as a “possibilitarian” – someone who helps students understand things they don’t know and experience things that might not imagine themselves doing. She likes to say her class is like a “living thing – breathing, expanding and contracting, just like the scarier, larger world… but within safe boundaries.”
Ms. Wickware is an instructor who is always searching for the “trigger” that will inspire her students to want to learn. She brings speakers such as Holocaust survivors or civil rights leaders to address the class. She sets up town hall meetings to discuss a key issue in American history. She helps the students organize a Wiki-page on the material in her class.
For many students, her classes are an oasis from the sometimes rough realities in Antioch – a town that has seen more than its share of foreclosures, divorce and gang violence.
One of her former students called Ms. Wickware a “strong role model” for girls and boys. “Her door is always open,” this student wrote. “You can tell she is here to benefit the students and not herself. I will never forget her and what she has done for me.”
She was named Antioch’s Teacher of the Year in 2012.