Franklin's Carol Duncan wins distinguished educator award from UNL

Her tireless dedication to students inside and outside the classroom has earned Carol Duncan of Franklin Public Schools the 2010 Freda Battey Distinguished Educator Award from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Education and Human Sciences.

In a luncheon today at UNL's Nebraska East Union, Duncan will receive an inscribed school bell and a check for $6,000, and Franklin Public Schools will receive a $3,000 stipend.

The 10th- through 12th-grade English teacher, speech coach and Quiz Bowl coach at Franklin since 1987, Duncan's students have had excellent success academically and in extracurricular activities. Over a recent five-year period (2005-09) in the Nebraska Reading Assessment, her students tested with 100 percent reading efficiency every year. During the same period on the Nebraska State Writing test, her students never had less than 96 percent writing proficiency and for three straight years (2005-08) had 100 percent efficiency.

"She was constantly pushing students to rise to their potential -- helping struggling students master basic principles of writing structure and counseling high achievers on the subtleties of verb choice," a former student now enrolled at UNL wrote in support of Duncan's nomination. "As an English teacher, she was the one who incoming sophomores feared just a bit, but also the one who graduating seniors lauded as the teacher who'd taught them the most."

Duncan has been just as effective outside the classroom as the school's speech and Quiz Bowl coach and former play director. Her teams have won nine conference championships and 17 district championships, and more than a dozen of her students have been state medalists in speech.

A graduate of Red Cloud High School, Duncan earned bachelor's (1971) and master's (1975) degrees at the former Kearney State College (now University of Nebraska at Kearney). She taught at Wahoo Public Schools (1971-74) and Hildreth Public Schools (1981-87) before going to Franklin. An adjunct faculty member at Nebraska Wesleyan University, she has taught six credit hours of college English to Franklin High School seniors from 1999 to present.

The family of Freda Drath Battey, a 1923 University of Nebraska graduate and former public school teacher, in 1986 established the Distinguished Educator Award in her memory. Candidates for this award are nominated by students in the College of Education and Human Sciences. The criteria for the award are "excellence in teaching coupled with recognition in other complementary education activities, such as counseling of students or initiation of student-oriented programs." The winner is selected by a committee of faculty and College of Education and Human Sciences students. Battey's family includes Joan and Charles W. Battey of Shawnee Mission, Kan. and Marian (Battey) and Harold W. Andersen of Omaha. Drath Battey was a public school teacher in Ashland.

WRITER: Tom Simons, University Communications, (402) 472-8514