Alumna Named New Hanover County Schools Teacher of the Year
Education alumna Fatima Sail has been named New Hanover County Schools Teacher of the Year. Hear her story as told by her school district.
Fatima Sail is effervescent, but don’t let the ear-to-ear grin, encouraging words, and springing thumbs up fool you: She’s a fighter.
Growing up with four older brothers in a little village on the Ziz River in south-central Morocco, she realized at an early age that education was going to provide her only path forward in a patriarchal culture.
But it was never easy.
“Even in elementary school I had experience with rude teachers and there was no help,” she said. “There was no IEP, there was no help for disabled kids. If you understand, you understand the material, if you don’t, you’re on your own.”
She wouldn’t be deterred.
“I thought that I deserved that education,” she said, “and I needed to get it.”