Florence Winslow says classroom experience, leadership roles would add an educator’s voice

By Miles Layton

EDENTON – Florence Winslow spent 25 years teaching science at Chowan Middle School. Now she wants a seat on the Edenton-Chowan Board of Education.

Winslow, 67, is running for District 1, Seat 2 on the board. A lifelong Chowan County resident, she said she decided to run after encouragement from Lisa Perry, who she said wanted an educator on the board.

“I want kids to be successful, and then I want to support teachers too,” Winslow said in an interview with the Albemarle Observer.

Other school board candidate in the race for District 1, Seat 2, is DeAnna Daniel.

Early voting started Thursday and the general election is Nov. 3.

Winslow grew up on a farm at the far end of the county, the daughter of farmer Thomas Berryman. She said she chopped weeds out of peanuts, helped throw watermelons and mowed with the tractor as a girl. Her father grew peanuts, soybeans and cotton and, at one point, rented about 500 acres.

She graduated from Chowan Academy in 1977, then earned a bachelor’s degree at Meredith College and a master’s degree at North Carolina State University.

Winslow taught six years in Elizabeth City before being hired in Chowan County. She taught at Chowan Middle School for 25 years, for a total of 31 and a half years in the classroom. Over that time she served as head of the science department, a mentor for younger teachers and a team leader.

She retired in 2014 and substituted for a couple of years. In 2018, she began keeping her grandchildren full time. Now that all of them are in school, she has been volunteering in the front offices at White Oak Elementary and Chowan Middle School, a role she began last spring and resumed this school year.

“At least I get to see what’s going on in those two schools, and I like what I see,” she said.

Winslow lives with her husband, Joey, a retired farmer. They have a son who works at Nucor and a daughter who is manager of labor and delivery at Chowan Hospital. Each has two children. The couple rents out their 200 acres to their son-in-law, who grows soybeans.

She is a member of Warwick Baptist Church, where she teaches Sunday school and has long served as a vacation Bible school director. She is registered as an unaffiliated voter.

Testing, technology and ‘old school’ methods

Winslow said she has not yet attended a board meeting but plans to. She said she agrees with a concern raised at a recent meeting that students face too much testing.

“There is way too much testing,” she said.

She said her own approach in the classroom was to keep testing to a minimum. She always taught the scientific method and problem solving first and saved the hardest material for last. Her students took a state science test in her final two years of teaching, and she said they did well.

“I thought the nine weeks testing wasn’t necessary and they didn’t make me do it,” she said. She said teachers can find out what students know in other ways.

Winslow also voiced concerns about technology in classrooms. Chromebooks were available in her classroom during her last two years of teaching, and she did training at N.C. State’s Friday Institute on integrating technology. She said she is wary of how much students rely on screens.

She described watching her granddaughter do math homework on a website where the problems were already entered. Winslow said the girl had very little work to do.

She said students, especially in elementary grades, need to practice handwriting and taking notes. Writing helps with memory, she said, and she required her students to take notes. She also said she would like to see printed textbooks used more.

“I am old school,” she said, while acknowledging that students need computer skills in a computerized world.

Her favorite part of teaching science, she said, was getting students to think, and she regularly ran experiments. She said she wonders whether as many hands-on activities are happening today, though she did not claim to know what is taking place in individual classrooms.

She also questioned whether career and technical education offerings teach skills students will use in the working world. She said she does not know what courses the high school offers and would need to learn more before commenting in detail.

Winslow said she has noticed shrinking enrollment at the middle school. When she taught, there were about 200 students per grade level. She said she has been told there are now about 124 students in most grades, with 96 in seventh grade. White Oak, she said, has held steady.

She said she opposes school choice and the transfer of funding that follows students who leave the district.

“I’m an independent voter, unaffiliated, and I don’t agree with everything either one party does. But that’s one thing I do not. I don’t like school choice,” she said.

She said she supports public schools and believes they are being hurt by school choice.

She said she would like to see students who have chosen other schools return to Chowan County. She said the loss of funding hurts programs, citing the art program at White Oak and Walker elementary schools. The two schools now share one art teacher, who spends half the year at each campus. She said she does not know whether the arrangement is a budget issue and would want to look into it.

“Both schools need their own art teacher,” she said.

Asked about student behavior, Winslow said she has seen staff handle problems promptly during her volunteer hours at the elementary and middle schools. She said administrators responded quickly to fights among students in the first days of school and sent students home when necessary. She also praised the school resource officers at both schools. She has not been to the high school this year and could not comment on discipline there.

Leadership and experience

Winslow said she does not expect to arrive on the board and overhaul the system.

“Somebody new is not going to go in there and change everything,” she said.

She said she has worked with several current district leaders over the years, including Superintendent Tammi Ward, who was a counselor at the middle school. She praised Ward’s leadership.

“I know she’s a good leader. She has a vision. But you know, I just want to be there to help with that,” Winslow said.

Asked why voters should choose her, Winslow pointed to her leadership background.

“I have leadership experience,” she said, citing her roles at school and church. “I’d like to apply those to help kids.”