“If you aren’t having fun and engaging with interesting experiences that uplift you, you won’t get much out of life.”
– Abbey Starling Nobles ’14
Southeast Region Teacher of the Year
Alumna Teacher Takes Top Honor Abbey Starling Nobles ’14 wishes she had a recording of when she was named Southeast Region Teacher of the Year. “I was so shocked I think my jaw dropped for 15 minutes while people were talking about me! I was so honored,” Nobles said. An English teacher at New Hanover High School, she sees the award as “a team win…a win for NHHS, a win for our students and win for our staff.” Nobles holds degrees in English with a concentration in secondary education and international studies with a Spanish minor. After applying to several schools her senior year of high school, she said, “UNCW chose me. I received the Teaching Fellows scholarship specifically to the university. Being from Wilmington, I thought I needed to leave my hometown to get a plethora of new experiences, but I was wrong.”
Once she arrived on campus, she didn’t look back. Her hometown took on new life as she dove into her studies. She also traveled abroad, worked two jobs on campus and joined Physical Grafeeti, the hip hop dance team, leading her mom to ask if she was ever going to come home! Nobles advises future Seahawks to “look at their college experience as a shopping spree and fill your cart with every experience you possibly can, meet people, talk to people you don’t know, get to know your local community, enjoy new and challenging experiences, trust yourself and your intuition and do things because they seem FUN!” She recalls now-retired English faculty member Dan Noland telling her, “If you don’t have fun writing it, no one will have fun reading it.” Nobles says the same goes for life. “If you aren’t having fun and engaging with interesting experiences that uplift you, you won’t get much out of life.” – C.C.
9
UNCW MA GA ZI NE
