The final part of an ongoing series featuring the teachers nominated for Vicksburg-Warren County Chamber of Commerce’s Teacher of the Year honors.

After 10 years teaching at Warren Central Junior High, Beth Krapac was ready for a new challenge.

She found what she was looking for in an opening for an engineering teacher in the Career Technical Education program.

“I wanted to learn something new, I like technology and I wanted to teach something more difficult and challenging where I thought I could make the future for the children better,” Krapac said.

Krapac is in her second year teaching in the CTE program and is the program’s nominee for the Vicksburg-Warren County Chamber of Commerce’s Secondary Teacher of the Year.

“I don’t deserve that,” Krapac said. “Where I am is just a fabulous place. I am blessed to be there and I’m honored to be there with those students. The teachers who are there with me, they deserve this hands down over me. I am appreciative of it, but I don’t deserve it.”

Krapac graduated from Mississippi College with a bachelors in science in 1997 and has been teaching in the Vicksburg Warren School District since 2007. She said her time at CTE so far has been a “joy.”

“We have the ability to go back to school,” Krapac said. “We have the training we need. We have the best program that I have seen ever. It is called Project Lead the Way. It is amazing what we get to do. We build robots. We build bridges.”

When she went from junior high to CTE the material was drastically different and the class sizes were smaller, but the technology and resources they have at their disposal has enable Krapac to have her desired impact on students.

“I have all the software. I have all the materials and everything that I want to do. I can create all different ways to use it and make more out of it,” Krapac said. “I think everybody has the ability to learn and I felt like if I save one child I saved a generation. I wanted to help children make a difference in the world.”

To help them make that difference, Krapac works to open her students up to the world around them, make them think outside the box and see their full potential.

“That they will want to work and make a difference,” Krapac said of her goals. “That they will want to be productive people in the world and make discoveries and be 110 percent of what they can be. I try to show them things that are outside what they know. I try to show them there is a whole world out there and there are more possibilities than they could ever dream of.”

The Vicksburg-Warren County Chamber of Commerce will choose one elementary and one secondary teacher of the year at the chamber luncheon today. The winner of each award will receive $1,000 from Ameristar Casino and the runner-up for each award will receive $500 from Mutual Credit Union.

“Humbling, it would just be humbling,” Krapac said of her reaction if she won the award. “I don’t have words for that. I would almost be embarrassed when I know the people who deserve it more than me. The teachers who are in the trenches really working so hard where they are to make a difference.”