Selected from a pool of 21 teachers by the North Carolina League of Charter Schools, Ball was presentedthe award on April 18 during a program at Lake Norman. She received a $1,000 check, and the school will receive $500 to be used for the new library.

Ball told The Courier-Times on Tuesday that she was honored and humbled by the designation.

“It is very good for our school to be recognized,” she said, adding that she saw the honor more as a reflection on the school and “not what an individual has done.”

She said she owed gratitude to her fellow RCS faculty and staff, as well as parents and students.

“I want to thank the Person County Schools folks” as well, she said, “who mentored me over the years and gave me opportunities to succeed.”

Prior to joining the RCS faculty at the school’s inception two years ago, Ball spent 22 years as an English and language arts teacher in the Person County Schools system.

Ball said this week that, in her application for the Charter Schools Teacher of the Year, she wrote, “Were it not for caring teachers who saw my words and motivated me to achieve, I would not have gone to college and become a teacher. Consequently, I have an obligation to fight for my students who have no advocate. Every day,” in her classroom, Ball said, “my teaching can be life changing.”

When asked how she felt about receiving the state honor, Ball said that the news was “still kind of surprising. I don’t think anyone is ever prepared to be recognized that way.” As a rule, she said, teachers “don’t expect to be recognized for doing our job well.”

RCS Principal Sam Kennington described Ball as “a wonderful teacher whose greatest strength lies in working individually with children to get the best from them.”

Working with Ball and getting to know her over the past two years, he said, has been “a pleasure. Wanda gave us instant credibility when she agreed to come to Roxboro Community School,” said Kennington, “and for that I am very grateful.”

Ball will go on, as the Teacher of the Year representative from the state District 9, which was created for charter school teachers, to participate in the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction’s Teacher of the Year program for next year.