CFNN Reporters Kayla Brown and Sophia Bullard

In this week’s edition of Teacher of the Week, Mrs. Amanda Nichols has been selected. She is in the CTE department and teaches Accounting 1 and 2, as well as Excel. 

She spent the first 3 years of her teaching career at Overhills High School. She has been teaching for 8 years total, but has been at Cape Fear for the last 5 years. She expressed that Cape Fear feels so much like home, it doesn’t seem to be that long.

Nichols didn’t always imagine herself in the classroom. She says that if she had not become a teacher, she would have loved to be an ultrasound technician. When she followed the teaching path, she claimed that it “just felt right”, and now, she cannot imagine herself doing anything else. 

Mrs. Nichols grew up just a few miles from here in Spivey’s Corner, where she went to Midway High school graduating in 1999. Fresh out of high school she attended Meredith College in hopes to attain a business degree for two and a half years. She did not stay focused during this period, and decided to take some time off. Over her time off she decided to get a job; after about five or six years, she continued her education at Mount Olive College pursuing majors in Accounting and Microsoft. She graduated from Mount Olive in 2007.

She found a job in insurance, resulting in spending a lot of time away from her home and away from her kids. Her decision to begin teaching and go to NC state to get her teaching license, was made for the sake of spending more time with her kids, and being involved in their school activities. She graduated from NC state in 2016 where she got her teaching licenses, and immediately after started teaching at Overhills High school. 

In 2019, she started teaching at Cape Fear High School just at the very start of covid. She enjoys teaching and interacting with the kids. When asked what her favorite thing about teaching was, she said “They may not want to grow up being an accountant, but it’s important to me they know they had fun and enjoyed class. Then I know I did my job.” 

Outside of the classroom Mrs. Nichols enjoys spending time with her family. Mrs. Nichols is married to the love of her life, has five children ranging from the ages of 10 to 21 years old, and one dog, a poodle, named Lucky. They are always on the go whether that is with travel baseball with her sons or travel volleyball with her daughters. When they are not on the go her family enjoys spending time at their house resting where she enjoys watching reality tv and singing competitions like The Voice. Mrs. Nichols enjoys reading suspense books, listening to all kinds of music, and watching her all time favorite movie Grease!

“She’s wonderful, she is an excellent educator. She cares about all of her students, and cares about their well being. And she supports the kids in any of their extra curricular activities.” Said one of her closest coworkers, Mrs. Melanie Lee. She sees Mrs. Nichols as an amazing educator and friend, and truly believes in her. 

One of her third period students, Sophia Bullard, says, “I love that she is so easy to understand. She could take the hardest seeming problems and make them so simple. She’s always put her students first and is always around for us. She is an amazing person.”

Ultimately, all of her students appreciate her understanding and compassionate personality as well as her desire to be involved in her students’ success.  These overwhelmingly positive qualities are why she was selected as this week’s Teacher of the Week.