22 western branch magazine TEACHER continued from page 21
She decided she liked having summers off, and it was convenient for her family once she had children — Kit, now a junior, and Artie, a freshman — both of whom attend Western Branch. She has taught at Nansemond River High School in Suffolk and Ocean Lakes High School in Virginia Beach, but she feels she’s found her home in Western Branch, where she’s taught for seven years now. “I’m from Western Branch, so it was nice to come home again,” she said. Hodges likes to inspire her students with fun experiments, like blowing bubbles on the desks with dish soap and a straw and measuring the splat after the bubble pops. She teaches a lot of cross-curricular skills — like using latitude and longitude to map and track earthquakes and hurricanes and to attempt to predict where the next ones will happen. But for Hodges, the most fun is seeing a student transform, not just in their knowledge of earth science but also in their organizational skills and inspiration to do well. Hodges said she frequently has former students stop by her class and tell her how well they’re doing in all of their other classes — even English, math and history — thanks to the skills they learned in her class. “The most rewarding part is seeing the light bulb go on,” she said. “That’s the big moment, because it happens every semester.”
Susan Hoofnagle Hodges, the 2016-17 Secondary Teacher of the Year for Chesapeake Public Schools, is flanked by Superintendent Dr. James T. Roberts, left, and Chesapeake Public Schools Board Chairman Jeff Bunn, right.
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