By By ROBERT BLANKENSHIP
Advance Managing Editor
This year, Bratt Elementary has welcomed five new teachers to their faculty to help educate students and aid the school in reaching its goals.
Robin Parker, Shonna Gilmore, Natalie Stevenson, Bridget Narcisse Barber and Andrea Carpenter are all walking the halls of Bratt for the first time and each teacher brings her own experience and talents to the school.
Gilmore, a former student at Bratt, is in her first full year of teaching the fifth grade. She is a graduate of Northview High School. She attended Pensacola Junior College and obtained a bachelor of art degree in elementary education from the University of West Florida. She has half a year of experience in grades three through five remediation teaching while at Byrneville Elementary.
Gilmore lives in Bratt and is married to Eric Gilmore.
Barber teaches the gifted students at Bratt. She has been teaching for 21 years and is a native of New Orleans. She has previously taught in Louisiana and at Scenic Heights in Pensacola. Currently, she shares time between Bratt and McArthur Elementary schools.
Barber loves to read and travel. She combines her love for the road with her other great passion, baseball, by having visited most of the baseball stadiums in the country.
She is married and has three children: a daughter who is a junior at the University of Florida and two sons who are in high school.
Parker, who teaches the second grade, did not have to travel very far for her new job. For the past six years she has taught the sixth grade at Ernest Ward Middle School.
Parker said she will miss her old school, but has always wanted to teach younger children.
Carpenter is another local teacher getting her first assignment. A native of Flomaton and graduate of the University of West Florida, she is teaching the first grade.
Went she is not at school teaching students, she is at home teaching two young children of her own: Madison, almost two-years old, and James who is four months old.
Stevenson also brings six years of experience with her to Bratt. She taught five years in Orlando and taught one year at Century Elementary after moving to Atmore one year ago.
Stevensan said she is pleased with her students this year and that they have helped make the transition easy.