Superhero Teacher: Charlotte Heinze
Fri, 2016-03-11 05:00
News Staff
By DAVID J. HARDIN
Cove Leader-Press
Copperas Cove High School teacher Charlotte Heinze teaches marketing, business, advertising, and entrepreneurship to students in grades 10-12. She is also the Marketing Education Coordinator and DECA Advisor for CCISD.
Originally from Dallas, Charlotte’s family moved to Copperas Cove when she was in the sixth grade and she has been here ever since. Her father is retired military and her husband is still active duty. Heinze has three boys, one who works for Nordstrom Department Store where he sets up fashion shows, one serving in the military and one who attends Taylor Creek Elementary.
Heinze said that her motivation for wanting to become a teacher was guided by her high school principal Mike Wilburn. He talked to her about becoming a teacher. Although she had never previously entertained the notion of doing that as a profession, she was inspired by what he said. With Mr. Wilburn’s motivation and guidance, Heinze became a substitute teacher and went through the alternative certification program for Texas and became certified to teach Marketing and Business classes. Wilburn is currently a member of the CCISD Board of Trustees.
Heinze said that you need to have a basic foundation of what you expect of your students while they are in the classroom, and she said classroom management is very important. Heinze’s teaching philosophy encompasses many different elements, and the most important one of those is that her students are hands-on and work in a group setting where they are executing many different projects. Many of these projects are community based and involve other businesses, organizations, and charities.
One project that Heinze and her DECA students started three years ago is known as Snack Pack Friday. This program is designed to assist students who are in need of food due to the fact that their parents struggle with the ability to provide meals for their kids. Heinze said roughly 79 students don’t have the resources for food when they are away from school. She and her students approached the administration with the idea and they loved it.
At the beginning of the school year and at Christmas, DECA students have a food drive in front of Wal-Mart where they collect food donations from the community. They then stock the pantry and every Friday members of the program help fill the backpacks with food for students to take home over the weekend. Each student receives three breakfasts, three lunches and three dinners. The students bring the backpacks to Community in Schools and there they fill them and do so anonymously. The Snack Pack Program won at the international DECA Conference last year for student programs.
Under Heinze’s leadership, the DECA program at Copperas Cove High School has been very successful in recent years. In February, 39 Copperas Cove High students competed at the Texas DECA State Career Development Conference in San Antonio, and 31 out of 39 students won and advanced to the international DECA competition which will be held April 22-27, 2016 in Nashville, Tenn.
Charlotte Heinze has created a connection with her students, and her students always come into class ready to learn and ready to make the world a better place through their creativity, work ethic, and most importantly, their community pride. Heinze connected her teaching philosophy to that of the words in the song the “Greatest Love of All” by Whitney Houston: “Children are the future, teach them well and let them lead the way.” “Our children will be taking care of us one day, and I just want to make sure that they have the right resources and the right foundation built, so that when they get into the real world they are able to be successful, and live their dreams,” Heinze said.
At the May 2015 CCISD Board of Trustees meeting, Charlotte was named CCISD Secondary Education Teacher of the Year.