Carol Mathis is truly a 21st Century Teacher.  She teaches 6th Grade Science at Hayes Middle School in Kanawha County, West Virginia.  In the summer of 2006, she requested a mobile computer lab for her classroom and was awarded thirty new laptops for her classroom instruction. 

Mrs. Mathis incorporates  technology daily into her instruction.  Mrs. Mathis uses classroom blogging, has her students do their creative writing on the computer, instructs them in the use of Microsoft Word, Excel,and Microsoft Power Point.  The student create charts and graphs of data from science investigations.  Mrs. Mathis sponsors an afterschool science club.  The students in this club test the water in the Coal River which flows beside the school.  They share the results of their testing with WV State Environmental Agencies.  Her class also gathers weather data shares that information on the GLOBE Learning to Benefit the Environment website. Mrs. Mathis trains other teachers on the GLOBE program.

Mrs. Mathis designed and maintains the Hayes Middle School website. She traveled to China with a group of teachers with the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia in the summer of 2005.  She developed a Project Based learning website on
her China experience for her students.  She was asked by the West Virginia Department of Education to write century units for science following Understanding by Design. 

Mrs. Mathis constantly upgrades her technology skills by taking online courses. She is also the co-director of the  West Virginia Writing Project Summer Institute where she trains  teachers how to blog and use technology in their classroom writing instruction.  Mrs. Mathis is an exemplary teacher who keeps her technology skills updated and incorporates technology into her instruction.

Elizabeth J. Moore