Helen Crompton • United Kingdom 
North Carolina Outstanding Cultural Educator
5th-grade teacher
Carrboro Elementary ▪ Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, North Carolina
As a teacher in the United States, Helen Crompton shared her teaching expertise and experience with local college students studying education. She taught them ways to promote a multicultural classroom and about cultural differences between living and teaching in the United States and the United Kingdom. Crompton practices what she preaches as she teaches her fifth-grade students about the United Kingdom. Crompton has dressed as Queen Elizabeth I, shared tea and scones with students, watched movies she’s made about England, and acted as a character from Harry Potter.
Crompton weaves her British culture into lesson plans. In math, her students engage in activities that involve currency, exchange rates, and weights and measures. In literacy, they study English authors and playwrights. Via Web cam interviews, they talk with people in the United Kingdom about topics such as World War II or Welsh mythology.
Crompton’s role as a cultural ambassador extends beyond her classroom, throughout the school and into the community. She visits kindergarten classes to teach about Christmas around the world, and hosted a British tea party for students, parents and visitors during International Education Week, and she organized a school-wide activity to paint a world map on school grounds.