This year at Green Level there are 12 teachers new to Green Level, who are teaching here for the first time ever, and one of them is Mr. Henry.
Mr. Henry was born in Nashville, Tennessee and has lived in North Carolina since he was 27 years old, and although this is his first year at the school, he’s been a teacher since he moved to NC.
“I did what’s called a lateral entry program at NC State, and first started teaching seniors at Broughton High School, and also public speaking as well as speech.” Said Henry.
Teaching is in his blood, as he has many relatives, such as aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins and his mom that teach, but he was kind of hesitant at first and wanted to do something different. Then finally, he realized that not only he would be good at it, he would also enjoy it.
In 2010, he got married to his wife, and they decided to start filming weddings in the summer, because he had studied film in college and knew the basics of it, but what first started as a side thing, then became his main job for years.
“I thought it’d be something fun we could do on the side and since teachers have summers off that’s when we could start it,” Said Henry, “But really soon we were really busy with it and making good money, but my schedule was full and we realized that if we wanted to have kids, we would have to make a decision.”
So he quit teaching for a while and started their own business. His intention was to be back to teaching in a couple of years, but time just went by really fast. And then, something changed.
Henry said, “Around 2021, my wife took a different job and I joined another team, but I was getting frustrated with it in a lot of ways, and realizing that the things that I was attracted to in video producing were getting to work with a younger producer and doing some kind of training or mentoring, and I realized that I was trying to make video producing teaching.”
And, after talking to some people he asked himself the big question: “Why don’t I go back to teaching?”.
He was worried, since it had been so long since he had last been in a classroom, that things would be really different and that everything had changed.
“I was lucky when I got a call from Ms. Summers and she wanted to interview me. I was kind of worried I wouldn’t get in and I’m so grateful for Mrs. Summers and the rest of the English department for having some faith in me.” Said Henry.
Teaching is a lot different than it was 15 years ago, and the biggest difference for Mr. Henry is definitely phones and the use of the internet, which is much more popular nowadays. He is grateful that the cell phone policy came into existence this year, and he thinks that it helps students and takes the distraction away.
He is really glad to be back and has been enjoying his first year back teaching a lot, and is really enjoying working with freshmen this year, as he used to teach seniors, and is excited for the rest of the year and to keep doing what he loves: teaching.
