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Eileen Ryan knew she wanted to be a teacher before she even made it to college. When she herself was in high school, the current Prince Edward County High English teacher started volunteering. Ryan worked with her local elementary school and loved the experience. 

“I was working with the younger students and I just thought it was really fun,” Ryan said. “I also really love literature and reading literature and talking about literature, so being a high school English teacher allows me to be a teacher while getting to talk about literature every day.” 

Ryan was one of four teachers chosen by their co-workers as the Teacher of the Year for their respective school in Prince Edward. The list includes Tony Baker, an adaptive teacher at Prince Edward Elementary; Louis Gould, a 7th Grade History Teacher, football and boys basketball coach at Prince Edward Middle; and a tie at Prince Edward High, with Ryan sharing the honor with mathematics teacher Pathravuong Vorn. Ryan was chosen out of that group as the District Teacher of the Year for Prince Edward. 

“Having fellow faculty members vote and choose two of us, that was a huge honor,” Ryan said. “And then to be chosen to represent the division, that’s also quite an honor.” 

Finding joy in the journey 

The thing Ryan enjoys the most about teaching is when it’s time to start discussing poetry. Now that’s a bit ironic, seeing as she hated poetry growing up. 

“I actually came to a new appreciation of it since I’ve started teaching students and had to answer the question of ‘why do we do this”,” Ryan said. “It was not my favorite thing as a student, but it is my favorite thing as a teacher. You have an opportunity to just be in a poem, to look around and see what you notice. We recognize that poetry is a lot more about the experience of the poem.” 

Gwendolyn McQuaige-Hicks serves as principal at Prince Edward High and said both of her school’s Teacher of the Year winners highlight the best qualities of the profession. 

“Mrs. Eileen Ryan and Mr. Pathravuong Vorn truly exhibit passion, commitment, and dedication

daily when teaching our students,” McQuaige-Hicks said. “They are an inspiration to all of us, and we are so fortunate to have them in our Eagle family.”

Eileen Ryan finds things to surprise

Ryan said she enjoys finding things that surprise her while working with the students.
“The things that I take for granted are brand new to some of them,” Ryan said. “I enjoy watching them discover new things.” 

Now Ryan advances to the next step, representing Prince Edward County as a whole in the regional competition. If she makes it through that stage, then Ryan will compete later this school year to be the Virginia Teacher of the Year.