Henrico's Top Teachers

Nikki Gross took her Fairfield Middle School track team to Highland Springs High School recently and was greeted quickly by shouts of welcome from dozens of former students.

"Did you teach everyone at this school?" one member of her team asked somewhat incredulously.

The answer, of course, was no – but perhaps not by much. There's no underestimating the influence Gross has had on hundreds upon hundreds of former students during her decade at Fairfield.

First and foremost, Gross is an English teacher – one who uses real-world experiences to reach her students and help them become stronger readers and writers. She engages them in service learning projects and other hands-on activities to help immerse them in the topics they are studying. And she helps them get back to basics.

"When you come in my class, the first thing you'll see is everybody has a book in their hands," she said. Developing the love of reading books has, she concedes, grown increasingly difficult, but a schoolwide effort at Fairfield has helped. Gross herself has won grants in years past to fund the purchase of more than 600 books for her classroom alone.

Gross seemingly stops at nothing to reach her students.

"Two years ago, during a novel study, her students raised almost $1,000 to donate to a charity for clean water sources," a colleague wrote in a nomination letter. "Last year, as a new member to the eighth-grade team, she rewrote a popular rap song to help students learn a grammar skill, and she has helped lead several remediation efforts to help improve students' literacy skills."

After school, Gross has coached several Fairfield sports teams and also serves as the school's athletic director – a role she assumed two years ago. She applied for, and won, grants from the Washington Redskins and goodsports.org to fund new equipment and uniforms for Fairfield teams.

"She is a cheerleader for our sporting programs, a leader for the coaches, and an advocate for Fairfield," her colleague wrote. "As a coach, she mentors students on academics and behaviors. She connects with students on a personal level and has formed many, many relationships that continue past middle school and far into the future."

Gross also has served as a response to intervention coordinator at Fairfield (identifying students who may need extra reading help) and as the new teacher coordinator at the school (helping new hires navigate the ups and downs of their first year in a challenging middle school environment).

Gross herself experienced the latter when she took the job a decade ago, leaving behind her role in information technology at USA Today to take a job family members always told her she'd have.

"My dad taught fifth grade, my grandma taught English," she said. "Everyone always said 'You're gonna be a teacher, but I was fighting it."

But she caved after sensing that she wasn’t able to impact other lives working in the business world.

The students at Fairfield remind her of her own middle school classmates in Washington, D.C., and she is a natural mother figure for many. She maintains frequent contact with dozens upon dozens of former students – many of whom have achieved athletic and academic successes in high school and college – and some even come back to speak to her classes, reiterating what she preaches regularly about the need to be well-rounded.

"Nikki is an amazing teacher because she loves all of her students and shows her love through a variety of ways," her colleague wrote. "She gives her students tough love, holding them to high expectations - and they rise to meet her standards because they see how much she cares about them.”