Alecia Bryant

“Ms. Alecia Bryant is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. She has worked at Southwest Middle School since graduating in 2013. While working at Southwest Middle school she serves as the History Department Chair and was named Teacher of the Year for the 2019-2020 school year. Before the pandemic Ms. Bryant also took students on educational international trips that were centered around the Social Studies curriculum; as she believes that all students need the opportunity to see history beyond just their textbooks. Ms. Bryant has a true passion for teaching, and she believes that building relationships with her scholars is the key to helping them achieve academic success. As she continues her educational career Ms. Bryant hopes to continue to instill a love and passion for history and learning in her students.”

Talia Laing

Talia Laing started her Social Studies career as an Archaeology major at Wheaton College in Illinois. Deeply enthusiastic about logic and argumentation, she also competed as a national collegiate debater. Graduating in 2008, she sampled teaching as a "fellow" in a Newark, New Jersey charter school, but only returned to education through NC State's MAT program after becoming a mom of three. During her studies, she assisted in Willow Oak Montessori Charter's Adolescent program (where she also taught Debate as an extracurricular) and completed her student teaching semester with Moncure School in the Fall of 2020, which was following a fully remote schedule. Talia is thrilled to pair the inquiry-centered pedagogy derived from NC State's approach with Montessori's collaborative and student-led methods in her own classroom. She plans to teach Middle Grades in the Fall of 2021, where she hopes to train critical thinking, facilitate diplomatic discussion, and create opportunities for students to view historical and contemporary issues from other perspectives.

Grayson Cole