Darby Kinsey
The nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center is pleased to announce that Battery Creek High School senior Darby Kinsey has been selected as the inaugural recipient of the Center’s Future Educator Scholarship, a $5,000 award.
Kinsey is a member of Beaufort County’s teacher cadet program and she was recently selected asa South Carolina Teaching Fellow. A dual enrollment student at the Technical College of the Lowcountry, Kinsey will earn her Associate’s Degree before she graduates from high school in June. She will continue her studies toward her Education degree at Charleston Southern University this fall.
A group of current and former educators served as the Conroy Center’s scholarship selection committee. They were unanimous and enthusiastic in their selection of Kinsey as the scholarship awardee. Two of the committee members, both Beaufort County School District teacher mentors, offered these appraisals of Kinsey for public announcement:
“Darby is committed, goal-driven, and confident that she will succeed in her chosen career path. She is looking forward to a bright and successful teaching career, working for and with her students and contributing to their personal and educational growth,” said Celeste Prince-Brown, who was also a Beaufort High School student of Pat Conroy’s.
Joseph Taylor praised, “The moment Darby sat down with the scholarship committee for her interview, she exuded confidence. She is a young woman who has known that she wanted to be a teacher since the age of four. Now, fourteen years later, she is getting ready to receive her diploma from Battery Creek High School and also her Associate’s Degree from TCL. When you consider what she has achieved in the past four years while working and taking both high school and college courses, it’s really quite extraordinary. Future students and teaching colleagues will benefit from having Darby Kinsey in their lives. As a teacher at BCHS told me recently, ‘Darby is the real deal!’ I have no doubt about that.”
In addition to the cash award, Kinsey will be paired with a teaching mentor through the Conroy Center to serve as an additional resource for her through her degree program and her entrance into her teaching life.
Established to encourage and support high school seniors with a declared intent to pursue a career in education, the Pat Conroy Literary Center Future Educator Scholarship honors the teaching legacy of the late Pat Conroy (1945 – 2016), acclaimed bestselling author of The Water Is Wide, The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline, The Prince of Tides, and more. The inaugural scholarship is funded through the generosity of former educators. To learn more about the nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center, please visit www.patconroyliterarycenter.org.
