{"id":10037,"date":"2021-04-14T11:29:59","date_gmt":"2021-04-14T15:29:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/?p=10037"},"modified":"2022-05-03T13:44:32","modified_gmt":"2022-05-03T17:44:32","slug":"2022-citywide-teacher-of-the-year-finalist-barbara-h-besal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/2022-citywide-teacher-of-the-year-finalist-barbara-h-besal\/","title":{"rendered":"2022 Citywide Teacher of the Year finalist: Barbara H. Besal"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the first article in a series of profiles about each finalist for Virginia Beach City Public Schools\u2019 2022 Citywide Teacher of the Year. The citywide winner will be announced later this spring.<\/em><\/p>\n

-by S. Woodward<\/em><\/p>\n

Barbara Besal has taught chemistry at First Colonial High School for 15 years, in the very same classrooms where she was once a student and graduated valedictorian of her class.<\/p>\n

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The Virginia Beach City Public Schools (VBCPS) alumnae first worked for four years in a research laboratory at William & Mary before deciding that her home was not at the lab bench but in the classroom. She credits her former VBCPS teachers for helping her land where she is now, and she is proud to call one of her former chemistry mentors, Kathy Turner, her fellow educator now.<\/p>\n

\u201cHighly creative and full of a contagious enthusiasm for teaching, Barbara not only inspires her students, but her colleagues as well,\u201d says Dr. Nancy Ferrell, principal of FC. \u201cShe encourages a freedom of thought and discussion on a broad range of topics not often covered in other classes, while fostering an environment where all students feel that their thoughts and opinions are important.\u201d<\/p>\n

A former student, Joseph Deneke, wrote of Besal\u2019s passion in his recommendation to the Teacher of the Year committee. \u201cChemistry is obviously her life \u2013 she is smarter and more knowledgeable about her field and she can teach the material better than any college professor I have had. Coming into Chemistry as a high school student is scary and nerve-wracking, but Ms. Besal quickly changes these feelings and makes the subject enjoyable and beneficial for all students. Whether it be giving a lecture, making ice cream, blowing up hydrogen balloons, or creating molten iron from the fiery thermite reaction, Ms. Besal always makes the class intriguing, insightful, and fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Besal believes that education is about impacting individuals: empowering them, uplifting them, challenging them, supporting them and shaping them into the people they will become. Because students \u201cneed more from (me) than just a chemistry lesson,\u201d she participates in other school and community activities, such as serving as an announcer for sporting events, refereeing volleyball games for Special Olympics and the Old Dominion Region and managing FC\u2019s Day of Service.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am, at my core, a problem solver,\u201d Besal wrote in her Teacher of the Year application. \u201cNiggling problems consume my attention and energy until I find the fix. What keeps me coming back to teaching is that I haven\u2019t solved the problem yet. I haven\u2019t perfected teaching. I make changes every year, sometimes incremental, sometimes holistic. But I haven\u2019t cracked it. I\u2019ll just have to keep trying.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the first article in a series of profiles about each finalist for Virginia Beach City Public Schools\u2019 2022 Citywide Teacher of the Year. The citywide winner will be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":10045,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[213],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-staff-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10037"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10414,"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10037\/revisions\/10414"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}