She’s a bell ringer for teaching

Students sipping from the Old Well is a clear indicator it’s the first day of classes at Carolina. Another: Kristin Papoi ringing a bell.

For the last five years, the clinical associate professor at the UNC School of Education has rung the 100-year-old bell, originally her grandmother’s, on the first day of classes.

“So many students that come through the School of Education say they want to be a teacher because they were so positively impacted by an elementary school teacher they had. That legacy is so powerful,” Papoi said. “I want students to have that passion and know they’re entering the best profession in the world. Teaching is leveraging all the best things about childhood and feeding students’ curiosity by leading them into new directions to help them uncover things they’re interested in exploring.”

Kristin Papoi’s grandmother, Thelma Papoi, rang a bell at the start of each school day in her small Ohio town. That bell now resides with her in the UNC School of Education. (Jeyhoun Allebaugh/UNC-Chapel Hill)

She always admired her grandmother, Thelma Papoi, who was known as “everyone’s first grade teacher” in the small town of Deshler, Ohio. After becoming a teacher at age 18 in 1921, she taught every subject and almost every student in the town for over 35 years, including Kristin Papoi’s parents.

Each morning before classes began, Thelma Papoi rang the same bell her granddaughter now rings in Chapel Hill.

“I just feel a real connection to her through the work that I do because it was so much a part of her,” said Kristin Papoi. “It’s amazing to think about everything she saw and how schools changed over time.”

 

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Kristin Papoi received the bell as a Christmas gift from her parents in 2021. She says ringing the bell at the start of the semester reminds students about the legacy and importance of teaching.

“So much about teaching is about relationships, building connections and understanding. You have to know about your students to be an effective teacher. It’s having a deep understanding of who your students are, where you’re teaching and what works best for them,” Papoi said. “She had such a connection to the community; she was really beloved. It speaks to how people connect to schools and how people connect to teachers that made an impact on them.”

Papoi graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University with degrees in journalism and English literature. She then went to Northwestern University to get her Master of Science in marketing.

Professor Kristin Papoi and Jill Hamm, dean of the UNC School of Education, recreate a photo of Papoi’s grandmother included in a yearbook from Deshler, Ohio. (Jeyhoun Allebaugh/UNC-Chapel Hill)

She worked in marketing for 10 years before deciding to go into teaching, carrying on her grandmother’s legacy. Papoi earned her teaching license in California before earning a doctorate in curriculum and instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She moved to North Carolina to teach in and serve as program director of the UNC School of Education’s Master of Arts in teaching program.

In addition to the MAT program, she is also a teacher educator in the Bachelor of Arts in Education elementary education program, newly relaunched this fall. The program prepares teachers for dual licensure in elementary education and either special education or English as a second language through research-grounded coursework and hands-on experiences.

“The program really equips our students so well for being able to serve the students in our state because every teacher is going to be a language teacher,” Papoi said. “Every teacher needs to accommodate different learning needs in the classroom, whether it’s special education or teaching students who are learning English, they’ll be so well equipped.”