When Ashley Cail agreed to attend a National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) conference in Minneapolis she didn’t expect to win an award.
But last month the 24-year-old former Williams Lake resident was one of four new teachers to receive the 2015 NCTE Affiliated Leadership Development Award.
Cail was the only Canadian.
“I took on a role last year when I was in the final year of my Bachelor of Education program, when a couple of my professors invited me to be a co-editor of English Practice, the journal produced by the BC Teachers of English Language Arts,” Cail said from Vernon where she has a contract teaching Grade 9 English this semester.
The award is given to early career teachers with one to five years experience who have demonstrated a capacity for professional leadership as well as a willingness to join and participate with NCTE during the upcoming academic year.
“There were 2.000 English teachers from around the continent at the conference,” Cail said. “It was a very humbling experience and I learned a lot.”
While growing up in Williams Lake, Cail attended Poplar Glade Elementary and Williams Lake Secondary, graduating in 2009.
She studied her first year of university at TRU in Williams Lake and then attended UBC Okanagan where she completed a Bachelor of Arts, a Masters in English and a Bachelor of Education degree, which she completed in June.
Presently she lives in Kelowna, where she is a teacher on call, but she commutes to Vernon to teach the Grade 9 English class.
She returns to Williams Lake regularly to visit her parents Angela and Steve Cail and this Christmas holiday will celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary.