Consistency, curiosity and effort are qualities that have helped one local high school senior shine brightly.
Sierra Stephens, 17, has been named the Thomas County Central High School Class of 2018 STAR student.
The Student Teacher Achievement Recognition, or STAR, program is sponsored by PAGE, the Professional Association of Georgia Educators. It recognizes the student with the highest SAT score and who is ranked in either the top 10 percent or top 10 students numerically in he or she’s graduating class.
Receiving this honor is a big deal to Stephens.
“My class has always been highly competitive, and for years that has driven me to always push to the limit of my capabilities,” she says. “To see the fruit of so many years of late nights, full weekends and even some tears proves incredibly rewarding. Receiving this honor wasn't from the work of a couple months before a test – it was from the effort of my entire academic career.”
Biology is Stephens’ favorite subject. She chose her Honors Biology and Advanced Placement Biology teacher Judy Holwell as her STAR teacher.
“Throughout high school she has been an encouraging, inspiring role model who turned the classroom from just four walls to a place of challenge and discovery and excitement,” Stephens says of her teacher.
Holwell, now retired, is humbled and honored by both the recognition and Stephens’ selection of her.
“In my 34 years of teaching, I’ve been privileged to receive numerous awards, but this is my very first time being selected as STAR teacher,” she said. “To have been singled out as inspiring by a student who truly inspired me on a daily basis is such a blessing to me. And to occur in the last year of my professional career...it couldn’t get any sweeter than this. What a retirement gift!”
Her time with Holwell is one of the highlights of Stephens’ high school career.
“Each day I sat in her class wonder filled, mesmerized by the miracle that is life, astounded by its intricacies and mysteries,” she recalls. “I had so much fun in her class I looked forward to it every day. Without Ms. Holwell I would have never become the student and person I am today.”
Holwell classifies Stephens as a scholar, “an individual who seeks knowledge, who thrives on learning.”
“She is one of the few students I’ve taught who really ‘got’ it, who could see how the incredible intricacies of life are woven together to make life the miracle that it is,” Holwell says of Stephens. “Sometimes she would come to class so excited about the assigned reading of the night before. She was so amazed at what she had learned, especially mechanisms at the molecular and cellular levels, she could hardly express her feelings. ‘Mind blown!’ she’d exclaim.”
Holwell also calls Stephens “the epitome of what the American female teenagers of today can be and should aspire to be.” And her personality is enviable, too.
“She’s friendly and gregarious but also demure and unpretentious,” Holwell describes. “She is a deep thinker who can form mental connections with a maturity far beyond her years, as well as being a brilliant writer. Sierra sat front and center in my class, right in front of my demo table. She was a voracious reader, and I always liked to see what title she’d walk in with each day. Her interests in literature were quite varied, a testament to her mental capacity.”
The most important lesson Stephens learned from Holwell is how to use her brain, “not just for memorizing facts, but analyzing, thinking and reasoning.”
“Her class was a welcome challenge that taught me to keep pushing until I truly understood,” she said. “That's a skill I will take with me wherever I go.”
Stephens will attend Lee University in the fall. She plans to major in nursing.