Elementary school teacher Daphne Fulson named Virginia’s 2022 Teacher of the Year. Photo credit: Coastal Virginia Mag
I always enjoy sharing stories about exceptional educators who have earned accolades for their work in the classroom. One of these is Daphne Fulson, an elementary school teacher from Virginia who has been named her state’s 2022 Teacher of the Year.
Daphne teaches bilingual second-grade at Portlock Primary School in Chesapeake, Virginia. In a career that has spanned 12 years, she has spent the last six of them in Chesapeake. Daphne genuinely enjoys her work with young people. “Teaching brings beauty and joy to the world,” she asserts. And she has a wonderful reputation among her colleagues. Leslie Russell, Principal of Portlock Primary School, describes Da[hne as a “caring, inspiring, and compassionate educator who has a natural gift for touching the lives of her students.”
In addition to teaching at Portlock, Daphne has worked as an instructor of English as a Foreign Language at Via Lingua in Peru. And every summer, Daphne works as a facilitator of content and pedagogy for Teach For America. In this role, her priority is to facilitate an environment where culturally responsive practices are used to deliver anti-racist, high rigor, instruction that promotes moral values, self-confidence, and self-esteem in students, guiding them to collaborate, communicate, think critically, and act independently as productive, problem-solving citizens of society.
In 2013, Daphne earned her Bachelor’s degree from Old Dominion University (ODU) with a double major in communications and Spanish Education, and a double minor in Social Welfare and English. In 2022, she earned her Master’s degree in Educational Leadership with a concentration in administration and supervision, also from ODU. In addition, Daphne has completed courses at La Universidad Veritas in Costa Rica, where she served as an international global ambassador.
In addition to her recognition as Virginia’s Teacher of the Year, Daphne has earned many other honors. She garnered the Sue Lehmann Teaching and Learning Fellowship for the Rio Grande Valley Texas region in 2015, and the Good to Transformational Teaching Fellowship in McAllen, Texas, in 2017. She was also named the recipient of the Segal AmeriCorps Education Award in 2017.