As students enter the gym at Cardinal Gibbons for mass, there is a projector showing what the mass for that day is celebrating. On Wednesday, April 15, it was for the Monsignor Gerald Lawrence Lewis Award. 

The Lewis Award was initiated in 1992. It is an award for educators in the Catholic schools of the Diocese of Raleigh, and it recognizes, promotes, and encourages teaching excellence. This year, Mr. Taylor Blanton won the award. 

Blanton has worked at Cardinal Gibbons for 16 years, and he teaches Advanced Placement U.S. History along with Economics. He is also a coach for the Crusaders’ cross country, swimming & diving, and track and field programs, and he has led students on the school’s Western Europe trip during mid-winter break. 

These are some of the many things that Blanton does around school, and they are also reasons he won the Lewis Award. The winner of this award should reflect the values of faith, knowledge, and character, and Blanton does that. 

One of the members of the Lewis Award committee, Mrs. Cynthia Hanks, said, “It would be hard to pick just one thing that sets Blanton completely apart, because it truly is a combination of things.”

Every candidate for this award has three different times that they are watched by committee members to see how they perform in a classroom. Every time, it is someone different who comes in, and the teachers don’t get to know what day it will be to prepare. 

“We want to see them doing what they do every day, and they have the chance to just run their regular classrooms,” Hanks said. “You get excited to come into the classroom when you have read these letters of recommendation, and they’re so personal.” 

Blanton is the third teacher from Cardinal Gibbons to get the Lewis Award since it became a thing in 1992. This makes Blanton winning the award all the more exciting for the Gibbons community. 

“When you walk into his classroom, you can just immediately tell that his goal is to provide this welcoming, Christian-based environment where people can just relax and take a breath,” Hanks said.

Blanton sees getting this award as a reflection of the community, not himself. “I think while I appreciate it personally, it’s really just a reflection of the positive environment here,” Mr. Blanton says. “It says we’ve got a community that values and respects each other, and an administration that trusts teachers to teach in a style that works for them.”

The Gibbons community seems to have had a positive impact on Blanton with the time he has spent here. “Gibbons has been a place that has convinced me to stay in teaching and make it a career. It wasn’t something I did for a couple years before moving on to something else.”

It is clear that the Lewis Award isn’t just a trophy on a shelf, but a way to show appreciation for the teacher who has led others and helped kids.