Anita Cegers-Coleman of Conway doesn’t like to be in front of people — unless she’s teaching or dancing — but she’s having to get used to it.
The 43-year-old Ruth Doyle Middle School keyboarding teacher was thrust into the spotlight as the Conway School District Teacher of the Year and, in late September, was named one of 14 regional finalists for 2017 Arkansas Teacher of the Year.
“I really wasn’t expecting to hear anything, and then I got a letter that I was one of the semifinalists, so that was fun,” she said.
On Wednesday, she went to the state Capitol to be honored with the other semifinalists.
Although she wasn’t one of four semifinalists announced, “I’m absolutely OK with it. The competition was extra stiff this year.”
Cegers-Coleman met Gov. Asa Hutchinson and received a certificate, a check and a long-stemmed rose.
“He did commend me for starting a coding club,” she said.
It’s been an exciting few months since she was named the district’s teacher of the year in May after being picked as Ruth Doyle’s representative.
Cegers-Coleman was teaching coding one day in May when she was surprised by her principal, Debi Avra, and Superintendent Greg Murry, who came to her classroom with balloons and cookies — on Pajama Day, of all days.
“I had my hair pulled back, no makeup, and I think I was wearing sweatpants,”
Cegers-Coleman said, laughing. “I’m standing there bawling. I had it under control, but the tears were flowing.”
She called her husband, Bernard, and put her cellphone on speaker so her students could tell him the good news, just as they had done when she was named Ruth Doyle Teacher of the Year.
“That was special for them to play a part,” she said. Cegers-Coleman said that when she filled out the lengthy paperwork to submit for the district honor, she had Avra read it first.
“Mrs. Avra came to my door. She said, ‘CC — can I be honest?’” Cegers-Coleman said, recalling the sinking feeling she had. “She said, ‘I see all your achievements, … but I don’t see the CC I know.’”
Avra said after Cegers-Coleman was named to the district honor that “whether it’s working with students at lunchtime to catch them up in keyboarding or cheering them on from the sidelines at games, her presence and extra efforts are noted. She is not afraid to accept challenges and enthusiastically models a we-can-do-it attitude.”
So, Cegers-Coleman said she injected more of her personality into the application — “that I have a quiet spirit most of the time, but I smile a lot and try to get along with everybody. Even though kids may think I’m strict, they don’t realize some nights I lose sleep praying about things they are going through.”
Children often have problems at home, which distracts them in class, she said. “They deal with a lot more than some adults could handle.”
She said teachers heard recently that a truck hit one of the students, but they didn’t know any details. Cegers-Coleman spent a sleepless night and found out the following morning the student was OK.
Cegers-Coleman said faith plays a big role in her life, and she relied on it when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008 when she was 36.
She had gone to an eight-week boot camp at Conway Regional Health and Fitness Center, and she felt pain in her right breast when she ran. She went to the doctor, “and he was telling me cancer doesn’t hurt, so that shouldn’t be it.”
A mammogram led to a biopsy, which revealed breast cancer.
“Thankfully, it was Stage 0,” she said.
She took 35 rounds of radiation and underwent a lumpectomy.
“Because it was such a low stage, I had a positive outlook going through it,” she said.
She has participated in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in Little Rock since 2002, and she’ll be in the race Oct. 22, too.
“I really like October because it’s my birth month and Breast Cancer Awareness [Month],” she said. She will turn 44 on Saturday.
A native of Pine Bluff, she is beginning her 22nd year of teaching, a career decision she made early in her life.
“I have loved school forever,” she said. “I used to play school with my little brothers, the neighbor kids and my stuffed animals, so it was fun.”
Her mother, Linda Cegers of Pine Bluff, teaches third grade in the Dollarway School District and was Cegers-Coleman’s inspiration to go into education. James Cegers, her father, died in 1993. He worked at International Paper in Pine Bluff.
Cegers-Coleman said her mother, who was a child when her parents divorced, had a hard time in school for a while. A teacher took a special interest in her mother, and it led her to go into education. One of Cegers-Coleman’s two brothers is a math coach in a school in Pine Bluff, she said.
Cegers-Coleman is also good at math, which she describes as “like solving a puzzle.” She majored in math and minored in business education at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway. She also has a master’s degree in business education.
She taught math and keyboarding at Conway Junior High School and spent 15 years teaching keyboarding at Bob Courtway Middle School, now Bob and Betty Courtway Middle School. She’s also a nationally board-certified teacher.
Her first big teaching honor came in 2004, when she was named Harkrider Walmart Teacher of the Year and received $1,000 — and a blue smock. She kept that smock hanging in her classroom for years, she said.
The past three years, she has taught keyboarding to fifth-, sixth- and seventh-graders at Ruth Doyle,
although a coding-block class has replaced keyboarding this year for seventh-graders.
She started a coding club last year, and this year’s club meets on Fridays and does activities with coding websites and electronic gadgets.
Basically, keyboarding is learning to type on a computer keyboard. She laughed as she recalled that some parents “thought it was a musical keyboard,” she said, pretending to play piano, and she had to explain it.
In addition, students learn how to type different kinds of documents, learn keyboarding terms, “and we even get into coding,” she said. The difficulty level of the skills increase in each grade level, and Cegers-Coleman pushes students — who call her Mrs. CC — to get faster and better.
She comes in before school and is available at lunch and after school to help students who are behind. Not only is she available; she’s been known to track down students to make sure they get their work done.
“I can be a taskmaster at times; they come up with excuses,” she said. It’s for their own good, she said, because when they get in eighth grade, they have to be fast on the Chromebooks to keep up with their work.
“They’ve been using technology all their lives, so they come to us with all these bad habits,” she said.
“What I really enjoy is when former students come up and say, ‘Thank you for pushing us so hard,’” she said. “That makes me feel good; it’s rewarding. I try not to be the mean, old typing teacher,” she said, laughing again.
Two students were sitting at a small table outside Cegers-Coleman’s classroom, eating their lunches one day last week.
Their enthusiasm for Cegers-Coleman was immediate when asked if they were her students.
“Oh, yeah! She’s a great teacher,” said Shamiya Pearson, 12, her eyes widening. “And she’s a very nice teacher. I wish we had one of her at every school.”
“She’s amazing,” 11-year-old Gabby Stagner said. “We get to do fun projects. I think she’s very lucky to be teacher of the year.”
Cegers-Coleman said she had to speak to the faculty this fall as the district honoree, and she dreaded it all summer.
Talking in front a classroom full of students comes naturally, she said, and — something that might surprise people, she said — is that in college, she loved to be “front and center” when she did step shows with her fellow Delta Sigma Theta sorority members. She also has danced with her alumni group during UCA homecoming.
Thinking about addressing her fellow teachers made her nervous, though.
“Generally speaking, I’m quiet and laid-back,” she said. “That was nerve-wracking — just the anticipation of knowing I had to do that.” She only had to speak for five minutes, and as it turned out, “it wasn’t that bad,” she said.
Cegers-Coleman received a $2,000 award as District Teacher of the Year, $500 of which was hers to use for whatever she wanted, and $1,500 for the classroom. She decided to focus on her coding club and has ordered “lots of electronic gadgets for them to explore,” she said.
She also received $1,000 as a regional finalist. The Arkansas Teacher of the Year receives an additional $14,000.
“I’m not upset; of course, I would have loved to have won the money,” she said. “I’m happy for [the four semifinalists] because they’ve been achieving things on a larger scale.
“Seeing the level of competition we had this time, I can definitely get the word out we could do things on a bigger scale; we have the resources. Whoever the new [Ruth Doyle] teacher of the year is, I can help them with District Teacher of the Year,” she said.
“I’m still excited; everybody’s been so supportive, and I didn’t expect to achieve what I have. Who knows what the future holds.”
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.