EdNC. Essential education news. Important stories. Your voice.

Search ednc.org

NC teacher Bobbie Cavnar wins national award for teaching, leading, fighting for students

Share this story

Our republishing policy

EdNC is a nonprofit, online, daily, independent newspaper. All of EdNC’s content is open source and free to republish. Please use the following guidelines when republishing our content.
  • Our content must be republished in full. If your organization uses a paywall, the content must be provided in full for free.
  • Credit our team by including both the author name and EdNC.org in the byline. Example: Alex Granados, EdNC.org.
  • If republishing the story online, please provide a link to EdNC.org or a link to the original article in either the byline or credit line.
  • The original headline of the article must be used. Allowable edits to the content of the piece include changes to meet your publication’s style guide and references to dates (i.e. this week changed to last week). Other edits must be approved by emailing Hannah Vinueza McClellan at [email protected].
  • Photos and other multimedia elements (audio, video, etc.) may not be republished without prior permission. Please email Hannah Vinueza McClellan at [email protected] if you are interested in sharing a multimedia element.
  • If you republish a story, please let us know by emailing Hannah Vinueza McClellan at [email protected].
Please email Hannah Vinueza McClellan at [email protected] if you have any questions. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Canonical tag

Please include the following canonical tag in the <head> of the republished story.

<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.ednc.org/nc-teacher-bobbie-cavnar-wins-national-award-teaching-leading-fighting-students/">

HTML content

This includes the title, byline, content, and tracking pixel required for republishing this story.

Copy & paste HTML
This story is tagged:
Photo Courtesy: NEA Foundation

Bobbie Cavnar teaches English at South Point High School in Belmont. In 2016-17, he was the North Carolina Teacher of the Year. He currently serves on the board of EducationNC.

On Friday night, February 9, 2018, at the NEA Foundation gala, Bobbie Cavnar won a big award.

The NEA Foundation website says, “In the evening’s nail-biting finale, Bobbie Cavnar, a 12th grade language arts educator from Belmont, NC, took home the top honor: the NEA Member Benefits Award for Teaching Excellence and $25,000!”

Cavnar’s classroom looks like a Victorian library. He describes teaching as 25 percent preparation, 75 percent pure theater. Cavnar says art is the way we learn to see each other, the way we learn to empathize.

This video featuring Cavnar — his classroom and his craft — premiered during the gala:

The video wraps with Cavnar explaining how “public education equalizes life.”

Congratulations, and thank you.