Doctor Shavone Ferguson should’ve be awarded the “Teacher of the Year” certificate many years ago, but, it didn’t turn out to happen that way. This year, though, I am making it my mission to accomplish this goal. She must receive this honor for a countless number of reasons.

To start off, Dr. Ferguson connects with her students and has a positive first impression on all that she meets. She cares about our problems, social and academic, as well as being quick on her toes to solve them, as she calls it “nipping it in the butt.” Keeping up with her newsletter, sent home to our parents weekly, was another phenomenal way of keeping all guardians attentive and interested in our class. Overall, she is very interactive with her children and their parents.

Miss Ferguson also can depict how others might need more help, or need more challenging work than others. She quickly adjusts to her students and gives us different work to do, accordingly. For me, personally, I was one of her more advanced students who had very high standards for herself and always needed extra work to keep myself from getting bored. She would constantly make me check my work and redo my problems, because I had a tendency to rush through test and quizzes. She knew I was a gifted student, but was a horrible test-taker so she quickly customized her teaching to fit my needs. Wrapping it up, this women molds to our needs and adapts to situations rapidly.

There are two types of teacher in my opinion: the interactive type and the ones who gives boring lectures. Dr. Ferguson was by far the interactive type. She loved to have hands on “labs” as she called them, and got us all hyped up about them as if it were the Super Bowl or something! But, the excitement wasn’t just for any reason! These creative labs that she put together for us were astounding! Projects she came up with were funny, creative, and sometimes edible! As a little fourth grader, you would walk through the halls on your way to gym, music, art, whatever the activity, and look up at her room, kids laughing, playing, and having so much fun, and say to yourself “I want to have that teacher when I become a big kid!” 

One of my favorite hands-on “labs” was the one about plant and animal cells. To this day, 2 years ago, I remember the parts of the different cells because of this project. We got to make cells, plant and animal, out of different types of foods such as gummies, grapes, marshmallow and Jell-O. Each type of food had its own part of the cell, the grapes as the chloroplasts, the Jell-O as the cytoplasm, the mega marshmallow as the nucleus and so on and so forth.

Another one of the best labs was the one about Tectonic Plates, and yet again it was a hands-on food activity, (you can infer now that I loved edible projects). We used graham crackers as the tectonic plates when they shifted, and then Fruit-Roll-Ups as the land or water on the surface. We talked about a convergent boundary, pushing the two graham crackers together, the Fruit-Roll-Up making a mountain, a transform boundary, the graham crackers rubbing up against one another, side by side, as well as a divergent boundary, the Fruit-Roll-Up breaking apart to create two separate landmasses. With all of this in mind, Dr. Ferguson incorporates extremely fun “Jeopardy!” games, genius project outlines, as well as enjoyable activities, while still staying within the rules of the county.

A third activity that wasn’t a huge favorite, but definitely showed her dedication as a teacher would be the Reader’s Response notebook. Each week we were assigned a day to complete the task and then she would reply back to us asking us more questions that helped our writing and comprehending skills thrive. We would read a book of our choice once a week and respond with a few different answers to questions that we worked on in class. Then Dr. Ferguson gave us a week to complete the assignment and then collected each notebook, one by one, and brought them home to her house to grade. When you got your journal back you would read through her perfect cursive, handwritten response that was on a daily basis, 1-2 whole pages and each one was different! It was amazing how much dedication Shavone Ferguson would put into these notebooks.

The transition from elementary school to middle school can be very difficult, but she makes it easy. Now, as you go through the year with her, she will give you a ton of work, and it would feel awful. On Friday nights, everyone would be chilling out at each other’s houses while you would be stuck doing homework. But now, looking back, it has made middle school so much easier. Currently being a 7th grader, all of my friends have been complaining about the loads of homework that they get. But, I still get homework too, it didn’t just randomly disappear when I got to middle school, I wish. The homework that I do get is easier and the habits I had made in Dr. Ferguson’s class helped me manage my time better, feeling like I have way more free time to play around with. When moving from elementary school to middle school, Miss Ferguson makes the switch super smooth.

When considering all of these countless remarkable qualities about Doctor Ferguson, we can all conclude that this lady really truly loves what she does, while trying her best to make everyone feel at home in the classroom. She connects with her students and guardians wonderfully, and adjusts to our strengths and weaknesses, her appearance and personality is flawless. The curriculum she is given is made exciting for us all to enjoy, and while doing all of this, she is a tough enough teacher that will give homework, but preps you for middle school so that the switch is super stress-free and laid-back.