TRACY AGNEW
tracy.agnew@suffolknewsherald.com

Special to The Tidewater News

SUFFOLK—The Constantia chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution recognized two local students at its Thursday meeting at the Cedar Point Country Club.

Krysta Jewette, a senior at Nansemond River High School, was honored with the club’s Good Citizen Award. She read aloud her essay, “Our American Heritage and Our Responsibility for Preserving It,” during the meeting.

Jewette plans to attend Longwood University in the fall and earn a degree in elementary education. She then plans to pursue a master’s degree in English as a Second Language.

She discovered she wanted to teach English as a second language as part of the teacher cadet program at her school. They did a unit on barriers to learning, one of which is not having English as one’s native tongue.

“I really want to travel” for work, Jewette said.

Her mother, Karen Jewette, said she is proud of her daughter.

“She has done an exceptional job,” she said.

Jewette has been a Virginia Girls State representative and section leader in the marching band and a member of the Future Educators’ Association, Beta Club and National Honor Society.

She also has worked at Chick-fil-A, where she is a team leader, and has been a 4-H Camp Counselor, Judah Praise Liturgical Dance choreographer and dancer, Warriors of the Word participant and Virginia State University GROWS Summer Teaching Program participant.

School-level Good Citizens, chosen by their respective schools, were Delauren Olivia Davis of King’s Fork High School; Shabria Witcher of Lakeland High School; and Joelle Pond of Nansemond-Suffolk Academy.

The recommended procedure for selecting the Good Citizen Award at each school is for the faculty to choose three seniors who have demonstrated the qualities of a good citizen, then for seniors to vote on their choice. However, each school may use a method of its own choice. Each school-level participant then can enter the scholarship contest if he or she wishes. The scholarship contest is graded on a personal description of how the student tries to embody the qualities of a good citizen, as well as a grade transcript and two letters of recommendation, as well as an essay.

Also honored was Nansemond-Suffolk Academy sixth-grader Anna Paisley Gray, who won at the chapter and district levels of the organization’s American history essay contest.

“I’m excited,” she said after receiving her award.