Woman returns to teaching years after serious car crash

CHARLOTTE — Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools students are returning to class Monday but there are still several teching vacancies.

“There are teachers being put through the pipeline every day that we are pushing to schools as quickly as we can,” said Laura Francisco, chief of Human Resources at CMS. “We are also working to fill our teaching assistant positions.”

Francisco told school board members during a back-to-school presentation that the pandemic left an indelible mark on the district’s workforce.

There have been 2,100 teachers who left the district since the beginning of last school year.

She said the district has implemented a host of strategies to deal with the shortage and ensure the schools are ready for kids, including offering teachers sign-on bonuses of $2,500.

“We work to fill gaps in schools with the daily sub and certainly with the guest teachers to help provide more stability to schools where the guest teachers are embedded in the school,” Francisco said. “They can be used as the principal needs them to be used. Either pushing into a different class or taking a class for several weeks. Whatever the need may be.”

Channel 9′s Jonathon Lowe spoke with a teaching assistant who will help fill one of those crucial gaps.

Nicole Thigpen was excited in 2004 when she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in music education.

However, she had to take a detour from her dream of teaching children music.

“It’s been over 10 years,” Thigpen said. “Actually, probably even 15, since I’ve been in an education setting. I am so excited. I am looking forward to it so much.”

Thigpen is a teacher’s assistant for kindergarten through third grade for exceptional children.

Postponing a profession in the classroom was not her decision.

“I was supposed to start teaching general music elementary school 10 days before I was to start my first job,” she said. “I was in a really bad accident and was in a coma for two months.”

Thigpen said she was turning left when a driver in an SUV ran a red light and T-boned her vehicle.

“I had a broken pelvis, a lacerated liver,” she said. “My whole right side of my body was paralyzed. I was in a wheelchair.”

She has endured a long road to recovery, including short-term memory loss.

“Because of the coma, I had a tracheotomy, so I have scar tissue on my vocal chords,” Thigpen said. “So I can’t sing the way I once did. I was a high soprano. I can’t hit those notes anymore.”

She said she is more than optimistic about a second chance to educate and inspire students from day one.

“I can’t wait to get back in and interact with the kids and the families and parents,” Thigpen said.

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