Mrs. Brittany Arnold Named ANSAA Educator of The Year

If I asked you who your favorite teacher was in high school, I have little doubt that a name would instantly jump into your head. You may not think about that teacher every day, but when something causes you to harken back to your school days, that name, that face that meant so much to you at such a tender time in your life, comes rushing into your mind, igniting a smile across your face. 

What is it that gives a favorite teacher pride of place in our memory? The answer is personal for each of us. Maybe it’s because they helped you achieve a goal you’d never thought possible. Maybe it’s because they walked you through a difficult time in your life. Maybe it’s because they inspired you to dream beyond your own humble expectations. One criterion that all favorite teachers must meet is this: They believed in us, and they helped us learn to believe in ourselves.

Most of us, if out and about town wearing the latest fashion from the Mustang Store, have probably had a similar exchange to the many I have had as an employee of the school. They typically go as follows:

“CAC…do you work there?”

“I do.”

“Oh, cool. I graduated in [2000-something].”

“Really? Did you love it?”

“I really did. Hey, does Mrs. Arnold still work there?”

The conversation then branches off one of two general directions. Either, “She was so tough but I learned so much in her class,” or “She was, like, the reason I got through high school”.

Good teachers inspire. Good teachers care about their students. Good teachers share a passion for their subjects. Great teachers leave an indelible imprint on our souls.

Teacher preplanning this year began on Tuesday, Aug. 4. Instead of joining their colleagues for the welcome back sessions, Mrs. Arnold and several other faculty members headed to a special independent school teacher conference. Vice principal Janice Northen had encouraged the group to join her and several hundred educators from around the state to attend the meeting, which was held by the Arkansas Nonpublic School Accrediting Association, or ANSAA. ANSAA is one of CAC’s accrediting agencies and boasts 112 total member schools across the Natural State. 

During the gathering, ANSAA administrators honored several nominees as exceptional teachers. However, the big award of the morning came last: Brittany Arnold, ANSAA Educator of the Year. 

“They called my name and I thought, ‘Surely not,’” Mrs. Arnold said. “Out of all these other teachers in all of these other schools, surely I’m not it. It was a little surreal.” 

In the spring, ANSAA contacted administrators of its member schools seeking nominations for their inaugural selection of an Educator of the Year. CAC administrators began the difficult job of choosing whom to nominate. The criteria were strict and the process involved a lot of work during an already chaotic end of year.

“With this being the inaugural year for the award, I knew CAC had a strong chance of winning because of the caliber of our teachers,” Mrs. Northern said. “Our teachers are truly exemplary, and I am proud to work alongside them each day.”

It’s a great problem to have, but this made the challenge of choosing just one educator to nominate nearly Herculean in its difficulty. In addition to being an outstanding educator, Mrs. Arnold met all of the other criteria for the award, including her commitment to independent school education — Mrs. Arnold has worked at CAC for the entirety of her 22 years in education.

After selecting Mrs. Arnold, Mrs. Northern and the admin team had to procure three letters of recommendation to support their choice: one letter from a colleague, one letter from a parent and one letter from a former student. Unsurprisingly, eager recommendation writers were easy to find.

ANSAA also required nominating schools to answer four essay questions about their nominee:

1. How does he or she model the mission of the school?
2. How does he or she ensure student engagement?
3. How does he or she utilize data to provide effective instruction?
4. What is his or her influence beyond the classroom?

Mrs. Arnold’s track record on all of the above is exemplary. But apart from all of the “eduspeak” and buzzwords of an accrediting organization, how does one properly measure the impact of an excellent educator? If you have a student who had Mrs. Arnold, you probably don’t even need to ask them what makes her the Educator of the Year. They’ve probably told you.

Teaching is hard. The tight-knit that faculty develop over time helps bring light into the darkness and provides cool water to help extinguish the ever-encroaching flames of burnout. It doesn’t take much to get our Secondary Campus faculty going on the subject of Brittany Arnold.

“She is a real life master teacher,” Danny Sullivan said. “She has developed the rare talent of being able to balance love and compassion with firmness, fairness and equality. She will not allow her students to give less than their best.”

Jessica Sims has a unique perspective on what makes her colleague, and former teacher, such a gifted educator.

“As a student, I felt that Brittany always brought out the best in me,” Mrs. Sims said. “Her class was challenging in a good way; she had high expectations and always pushed us hard to meet them.”

Mrs. Arnold’s path to CAC came together so quickly and her commitment to the school has held so strongly that it has the all too rare feeling of inevitability: that Mrs. Arnold is just the right person in just the right place doing just the right thing. 

As Mrs. Arnold, then Ms. Jamison, was preparing to graduate from Harding University in 2004, former CAC Principal Ken Roberts attended a job fair in Searcy. Mrs. Arnold dropped off her resume with Mr. Roberts, who soon after called her and offered her a job teaching 10th grade English at Mustang Mountain. She was just 22 years old. 

“I really was just a baby, but I had the best mentors,” Mrs. Arnold said. “[Former teachers] Melissa Leverett and Teresa Story really raised me as a teacher. I needed them.”

This fall begins Mrs. Arnold’s 22nd year in education, all of them with CAC. She has seen a number of changes through those two decades, but her calling to teach at the Mountain remains clear because of the impact the community has had on her life.

“The unity and the closeness you feel from every part of our community — the students, the teachers and the parents — is amazing,” Mrs. Arnold said. “This community has surrounded me through some of the hardest times in my life.”

Mrs. Arnold pays that bond forward as a veteran teacher, helping mentor younger teachers and encouraging them to love and challenge their students.

“She is always willing to take the time to truly listen, offer solutions to problems and find ways to help and support me,” Mrs. Sims said. “I have to laugh because she intimidated me when I was a student in her classroom back in the day, but now I consider her one of my dearest friends on this campus.”

For today’s underclassmen, it may be hard to see Mrs. Sims’ vision. The work is hard. The expectations are high. It’s not always easy when you’re young to understand that doing difficult things will pay off in unexpectedly important ways. Many younger students whisper their fears to each other in the hallways about taking Mrs. Arnold’s English class. They’ve heard she’s tough.

But it doesn’t take long before they realize: Tough is good.

“I always loved teaching 9th grade because you’re really able to push them for the first time and they still want to please,” Mrs. Arnold said. “You get to open their eyes to hard things, and they think they can’t do it for the first nine weeks. Then they start to realize that they can do really hard stuff. 

“They thrive on working hard, and by the end, they have a real sense of accomplishment because they believe in themselves.”

Senior Kate Tuxhorn has gotten to see this firsthand since she was a freshman. As she prepares for her final year of high school, she knows that Mrs. Arnold’s classroom helped provide the space to learn who she was capable of becoming.

“Not only has [Mrs. Arnold] developed my love for reading and writing, but she has imparted to me the importance of critical thinking and what it means to really understand what someone has written,” Kate said. “She’s helped me to see so much more than words on a page and she’s so much more than a great teacher.

“She helps make CAC what it is to students like me: a place where learning is a privilege and a cherished time we’ll always remember.”

CAC’s faculty is blessed with an abundance of talented teachers who express their love for God and those who bear His image by serving children and modeling the love of Christ to them daily. For Mrs. Arnold, work at CAC has been a daily answer to an irresistible calling. And that call, and her lifelong answer, has made a difference in thousands of students’ lives. 

So the next time you meet a CAC alum out in the wild, ask them who their favorite teacher was. Watch their eyes brighten, see their smile begin to curl, and get ready for a Mrs. Arnold story.