DeCarvalho wins Davies’ Tech District Teacher of the Year laurel

LINCOLN – Administrators and teachers at the William M. Davies, Jr. Career & Technical Academy desperately hoped to pull off a monumental surprise on Wednesday afternoon, but they had issues making it happen – at least for a few minutes.

They wanted to honor English teacher Hilda DeCarvalho with the prestigious Davies’ District Teacher of the Year award, though the problem was getting her to oblige and get to the main office. As always, DeCarvalho said she was too busy working even though school had been over for nearly 30-40 minutes.

Assistant Cheryl Carroll finally coaxed her up with a fib about wanting to discuss post-prom details, and as soon as DeCarvalho peeked her head inside the conference room door, she knew exactly why she had been beckoned.

She looked at the white board on the left-side wall and saw familiar congratulatory notes and drawings, those from daughters Emma, 11, and Lilly, nine, who were standing right in front of them. She peered to her right and located husband Carlos DeCarvalho, who happens to work in the school’s Automotive Careers department, as well as parents, Thadde and Hilda Potrzeba, and grandmother Hilda Neves.

All reside in Cumberland.

Carroll immediately asked her if she knew what was happening, and she laughed, then replied, “Yes, and I am surprised! I was a little worried; I

thinking, ‘Why are we going in the big room? What’s happening? Am I in trouble?’”

Director Mary Watkins responded, “No, you’re not in trouble, and we’re so thrilled to have selected you. You truly deserve this.”

Someone said she was surprised DeCarvalho hadn’t started crying, and the award winner replied, “No, I’m not. I’m in too much shock, but that will come later.”

She admitted that she had applied for the laurel a couple of years ago, but didn’t win so thought, “Why bother?

“I wasn’t even going to apply this year, but my co-teacher, Barbara Fournier, told me, ‘Oh, no, you need to. You do too much for this school not to,’” DeCarvalho said. “I said, ‘It’s not just me. This is a total community effort, and she answered, ‘No, no, no, you need to apply.’”

Watkins said she’s on the District Teacher of the

Year selection committee, but is a non-voting member. That committee consists of administrators and teachers. The process begins when Davies brass asks anyone who wants to nominate their candidate for the position – those people include members of the community, faculty, students, administrators, parents or instructors themselves.

All of the nominees are then notified and a celebration is held to honor their contributions to Davies. After that, the administration invites each nominee to, if they choose, to apply for the final round of the District Teacher of the Year process. The committee then whittles it down to – in this year’s case – six or seven.

“Hilda stood out because she’s so deeply involved in everyone,” Watkins said before the surprise party. “She’s done so much work in and for the community, she managed the prom for us, she was a mentor coordinator and she spearheaded the CTE/Academic Integration process, where we try to integrate CTE with the academic side.

“Honestly, she’s like our cheerleader,” she added. “As a mentor coordinator, she worked with all of our new teachers. When they come in, she makes sure that those who are new to the district but maybe not new to teaching are integrated into the school community, that they feel comfortable and part of the Davies population.

“I’m thrilled with this; she’s super. I’m so happy. Hilda’s going to represent Davies so well.”

DeCarvalho, a Cumberland High School graduate, began her career at Davies on Aug. 26, 2013. She was hired as an English and history teacher,

but has spent most of her time teaching the former. Right from the get-go, she became involved in more than just instruction.

Between 2013-17, she acted as an After-School Academic Recovery teacher; and from 201517, she became a Rhode Island Department of Education Learning Champion. Again in 2017, she trained as a RIDE Induction Coach; and, that same year, DeCarvalho chose to become the Patriots’ varsity basketball cheerleading coach; that lasted until 2022.

Two years later, she decided to act as the varsity football cheerleading mentor, again until 2022. That came from her experience with the Clippers’ cheerleading squads as a student.

From 2017-23, she worked with the school’s Positive Behaviors Interventions & Supports program (PBIS); and – when this current class of seniors were sophomores – she elected to become its co-advisor. During the course of the school year, she helped these seniors organize their Homecoming, Senior Prom, fundraising events and numerous others.

She became the mentor coordinator a year ago, and worked with CTE/Academic Integration for the last two.

“When I was doing that integration, I went into Carlos’ classroom, the culinary classroom, and I helped them with literacy skills,” DeCarvalho said. “Merging CTE with academics, I love it. It’s amazing. It’s great because it helps build relationships with the kids.

“The students that I didn’t know at the beginning of the year, after working with them, now they see me in the hallway and say, ‘Hey, are you coming to our class today?’ And I say, ‘Well, maybe not today, but maybe next week I can be there.’ And then the opposite can happen, too.

“I’ll have students say, ‘Hey, I’m culinary, too, and I see you going into that other culinary class but you walk by ours. Why are you not coming in? We’re writing essays, too,’ so I went in and helped them. I absolutely love it.”

Now that she’s the District Teacher of the Year, she will join other winners around the state to participate in workshops and other meetings to collect ideas on how to better their schools. They will bring that information back to their educators to disseminate and enact if they so choose.

“That’s one of my favorite things – dealing with other educators and learning from them, getting ideas and being able to share them; it’s all about the larger community,” DeCarvalho said. “We are teachers here at Davies; this is our Davies community, and I absolutely love it. Teachers as a whole have a camaraderie.

“We work best when we work with each other. It’s the same way with our students. We want them to work in groups; well, so do we.”

Her husband Carlos said he was thrilled when he found out about DeCarvalho’s well-earned accomplishment about a week before the informal ceremony.

“It was quite a surprise, but I know she deserves it,” he said. “She works so hard, and we help each other out. We push each other. Our kids only found out (the day before the gathering). I wanted to keep it a secret, so I had to hold onto that for a while. When I told them last night, they went crazy, they were so happy.”