Reuel Sample

This is the Wilmington Standard. I'm Reuel Sample. Welcome to our podcast in this new year of 2026.

I am very happy to be joined by Dr. Amy Dunning, running for, I always call it the school board.

Amy Dunning

That's what I call it too.

Reuel Sample

For the Board of Education. Welcome, Amy.

Amy Dunning

Thank you. I appreciate it. Happy New Year to everyone.

Reuel Sample

That's a great New Year. Things are starting off well. Okay.

So you are new. You are coming on to the playing field. Brand new.

I am brand new. You are brand new. So tell us about it.

Tell us about who you are. You have a PhD in education. So let's go from there.

Amy Dunning

I do. I think you have to backtrack a little bit to understand a little bit about how I ended up at this point. I started off my career as an elementary education major.

Actually, before that, I was born. Before that, there's dark and light. Born and raised in Rockingham County.

So just North of Greensboro in a very small town, town's Madison-Mayodan. And Mayodan, by the way, is the only town in the United States with that name. It is where the Mayo and the Dan River meet.

Reuel Sample

Mayodan.

Amy Dunning

Mayodan. And Madison is the other. And so very small, very small town.

That was where I grew up. And I went to University of North Carolina Greensboro for my undergraduate degree, which was in elementary education. You wanted to be going to teaching at that age.

I did. I always, well, I always knew I wanted to work with kids. Originally, I wanted to be a pediatrician.

Reuel Sample

Really?

Amy Dunning

I did. I did. I learned that I can't do blood.

Reuel Sample

That's important.

Amy Dunning

Or like broken bones and bones stick. I figured that out in high school or in early high school.

Reuel Sample

That's a good thing to figure out.

Amy Dunning

Yes. But I always, you know, I grew up babysitting and I have two younger brothers. So I just, I've always enjoyed playing the teacher.

And then I did a great program in high school called teacher cadet, where I was able to shadow a teacher in an elementary school. And that confirmed what I wanted to do. I applied to be a North Carolina teaching fellow.

I'm not sure if you, they still have the program. It's a little different now, but at the time they paid for your undergraduate degree and you agreed to teach for four years in a public school in North Carolina.

Reuel Sample

Okay.

Amy Dunning

And if you did not meet that requirement, then you would have to pay back the loan. So I was accepted as a North Carolina teaching fellow at UNCG where that's where I went and I loved it. It was a great experience.

When I graduated, I ended up getting a position in a sixth grade math classroom.

Reuel Sample

Sixth grade.

Amy Dunning

At a middle school.

Reuel Sample

Oh man.

Amy Dunning

It wasn't my plan, you know, but I always loved math and I've always been really good at math. And so I thought I can do this.

Reuel Sample

Oh yeah. You couldn't pay me to be in sixth grade again.

Amy Dunning

It's the best. I started it. I fell in love with middle school kids.

They come in in sixth grade and they're just still young little babies. And then by eighth grade, they're young adults. And that all happens in the middle school.

And I remember my middle school experience and how challenging it was. And I think that is part of what made me want to be in that area and accept that job because I remember that. And I wanted to be a teacher that students felt they could come to with anything they had.

Reuel Sample

And middle school is considered part of elementary education.

Amy Dunning

Sixth grade is. So I was certified kindergarten through sixth grade. So I ended up teaching sixth grade math.

I fell in love with teaching middle school. I fell in love with teaching math. So I did get certified to teach sixth through ninth grade math.

And I decided to go back and get my master's degree in education at Elon University. Oh, good school. Yes.

And so I, they had a program there specifically for teachers who were in the classroom. Okay. And so it was very heavy summer coursework, a little lighter during the school year.

But what was really great about that is I was able to implement the things I was learning at Elon into my classroom.

Reuel Sample

So you would learn it then and then.

Amy Dunning

Immediately, that immediate practice and reflection of what is working and what is not working. And I realized that the way I was teaching math was not using best practices. Interesting.

I was teaching very much using memorization. I would have students memorize step by step exactly what to do. We would practice it, rehearse it over and over.

And I learned during my master's program that the students didn't have any conceptual understanding of why certain algorithms work. Interesting. So for example, do you know the algorithm for how to multiply fractions?

For example, one half times two third.

Reuel Sample

Well, I used to teach it.

Amy Dunning

Oh my goodness.

Reuel Sample

You have to manipulate the mixed number and then flip.

Amy Dunning

That's division.

Reuel Sample

But then you have to multiply across the top.

Amy Dunning

So multiply numerator times numerator, denominator times denominator. But note too, you started at first to say the algorithm for division, right? Because we have all of these formulas and algorithms in our head.

And just like kids, they're trying to remember, okay, which one is it I do for multiplication? Which one is it I do for division? Meanwhile, not understanding really what it means to take a half of two thirds.

Exactly. Also, that's how I was taught. So I was learning as well, this conceptual understanding of math.

Reuel Sample

So what's the alternative to that?

Amy Dunning

So the alternative is to use story problems, to use manipulatives, to make sense, build that conceptual understanding first.

Reuel Sample

Interesting.

Amy Dunning

And then not saying you don't teach the algorithm, but having that understanding. Then when you attach the algorithm, you understand why it works. It's easier to recall.

And then it helps you as you progress to higher levels of math.

Reuel Sample

Because the more senses you get involved in education, the more it sticks.

Amy Dunning

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Reuel Sample

Yeah. So you got your master's. Yes.

And then what made you go on to get a PhD after that?

Amy Dunning

So I started to change how I was teaching math. And as a result, students were more engaged in math. I had higher test scores.

It was fine. It was fine. And I thought, every student needs this.

Why does everybody, why are we not doing this? And so I decided that I wanted to teach teachers how to teach math. And that was what encouraged me to go back for my PhD was so that I could teach teachers.

Reuel Sample

Yeah. And so how long did your PhD program take?

Amy Dunning

Six years.

Reuel Sample

You weren't in residence. You were probably teaching at the same time.

Amy Dunning

No, I did full-time.

Reuel Sample

You did residence as well.

Amy Dunning

I did.

Reuel Sample

Six years.

Amy Dunning

So I was also a research assistant. I worked on a project called Responsive Teaching for Elementary Mathematics.

Reuel Sample

Okay.

Amy Dunning

And so it was a part of a three-year professional development with the National Science Foundation. And we traveled across the United States, collecting data and talking about what it means to teach in a way that is responsive to children's thinking.

Reuel Sample

Now, how long did you teach teachers?

Amy Dunning

Five years. Five years. Formally five years.

Reuel Sample

Okay. And where was that?

Amy Dunning

At the University of Illinois in Springfield.

Reuel Sample

Wow. Okay. So you were a Southern girl who went North.

I was. It was quite a culture shock.

Amy Dunning

It was. I became really fascinated with the corn because everything is flat. It's not like here where you might have a field and then you can see the line of trees in the distance.

The fields go on forever. Forever. Forever.

And there's so much corn and a lot of what happens revolves around the seasons of corn and harvesting.

Reuel Sample

Oh yeah.

Amy Dunning

I'm from Erie, Pennsylvania.

Reuel Sample

I understand those changes of seasons. But then you came back down here. How long have you been back in Wilmington?

A little over a year. A little over a year. And what made you decide to run for school board?

Amy Dunning

I think what ultimately prompted that was that Pete Wildeboer decided not to run. And I felt that I could be someone who could fill his shoes in a way that represents what he stands for and help to continue the work that he and the other Republican members of the school board have been doing.

Reuel Sample

I think it's interesting and incredible and much needed that you are bringing a PhD into a school board. That not only have you been in the classroom teaching, you have been teaching teachers as they're going into the classroom. And giving them that kind of background, you know, things that you learned so that they don't have to repeat that kind of aha moments that you had as a master's degree.

Let's talk about something that is sort of circulating around as people get to know who you are. They want to know, are you really a Republican?

Amy Dunning

Yes.

Reuel Sample

Because you were, before the show, the three of us, my wife was here and we were talking about independence and everything else. You recently became a Republican in name, but it sounds like you've always sort of been a Republican, but you have been registered as an independent.

Amy Dunning

Yes. I have to admit when I was first called a Rhino, I did not know what that meant. I had to Google it.

So Republican in name only. And I get a kick, my husband and I get a kick out of that. And we joke around with each other because I'm actually probably more on the really conservative side.

So yeah, I mean, I was 18. I grew up in a rural area that was, it was red. It was a red County.

And so when I became 18, you know, I wanted to be my own self and I was going to the big city of Greensboro and, but I knew I, I knew I wasn't a Democrat. And so I just, I just registered unaffiliated and it remained that way until I moved to Illinois. And actually in Illinois, you do not register with a party.

You just register to vote. Interesting. And that explains a lot about Illinois.

And then you would just pull a ticket for whichever party you wanted. And then when I moved back here, I registered as a Republican. So I became a Republican in Illinois.

But there's no evidence of that. And I understand the concern. And I did also want to address that.

I know I have voted in general elections only. And I understand the concern of that. And, you know, I have, I have to say that I'm sorry.

I don't know that I really fully understood the importance of voting in primary elections. And that, to be honest, that's just not where my mind was. I was, I was in teaching and wasn't really involved in politics.

And I feel just like the majority of Americans, you vote in the presidential election and right then.

Reuel Sample

And truth be told, 60 to 70 percent of all Republicans don't vote in primaries and only 30 percent of Republicans voted in the Wilmington elections, which is why we have a Democrat city council. So if that's being held against you, then they could probably look in the mirror. So but thanks for sharing that.

That's that's tough to do. It's nice to have a politician and welcome to the world of being a politician.

Amy Dunning

I have learned so much about politics in the past few months.

Reuel Sample

Well, it's nice to have a politician to kind of explain that right up front. So I appreciate that. So you are going into this.

We were talking ahead of time about your three C's that are at the center of your campaign. What are those?

Amy Dunning

So my three C's are to center high quality instruction, to contribute insider knowledge and to cultivate safety.

Reuel Sample

All right. What is center high quality education?

Amy Dunning

High quality instruction. So when you are centering high quality instruction, really what you're doing is centering the students and their thinking. And so education for a long time has been a lot like a banking system.

OK, so if you think of a bank, you go, you put money in and then you withdraw the money. Interesting. OK, and so that's how we have been treating our students.

We give them information and then we expect them to spit it back out on a standardized test, say.

Reuel Sample

Interesting. OK.

Amy Dunning

And so moving away from that where we aren't telling students what to do, but rather teachers, they're creating this knowledge together. OK. And often students are coming up with these ideas on their own.

Reuel Sample

Interesting.

Amy Dunning

So the teacher then attends to the ideas that students have, elicits that thinking and then builds on that thinking, connecting it to the content or curriculum.

Reuel Sample

It means that students are much more involved in their own education, that you're just not teaching chapters one through four today. You are getting them involved in the learning process. Yes.

That's fantastic.

Amy Dunning

Yeah. And I think that a lot of times what I have found is teachers, they think that they are, you know, I'm doing the best practice. It was just like me.

I thought I was doing all of the right things and I learned that there was more I could be doing, but I didn't know any better. And when you know better, you do better.

Reuel Sample

Does that mean that you have to, that you have to redo? Sorry, folks. I was looking down at a recording thing here.

Sorry about that. Does that mean that you have to redo some of the praxis that our teachers, you know, they've got to put so many checks in so many boxes throughout the day. Do you have to redo those or do you have to, do you have to?

Amy Dunning

Can you elaborate on your question? I want to make sure I understand.

Reuel Sample

So for instance, I have friends in other places across the country that are teachers that the system is less concerned about what the kids learn and more concerned about did they do this throughout the day. Did they say each student's name three times? Did they go around the room three times?

So on and so forth, which all seems kind of silly, but those are all part of the practices that they have to check off. What you're saying is that if we get back to a student-centered approach, do those kind of things go away?

Amy Dunning

So imagine a math classroom, okay. So first of all, let's think of it from the banking approach, right? How likely you and I were taught where the teacher tells us what to do, we repeat it, we might do it together, and then you're going to do numbers 1 through 30, just practice, and then you might have two word problems at the end that you dread and sometimes skip.

Okay, moving away from that, in this type of math instruction, the teacher is posing a story problem, the students are solving it, and then having a whole class discussion at the end where the teacher's connecting the strategies that students come up with to the math content. And so I feel like what you're asking is, okay, in this whole class discussion, am I going to make sure that I have called on X amount of boys and X amount of girls, okay? And so a lot of times what teachers do too is they might just ask for volunteers.

And so what is really best is, best practices, is to really just be purposeful with those decisions, and making sure that as the teacher, I know all of the strategies that kids might come up with, that way when I'm circulating the classroom, I already have an idea of what kids might do. And then I can be purposeful in not just thinking about the mathematics, but also about the author of the strategy to ensure that I am meeting, because we do want, there are less girls involved in STEM and math, and so we want to make sure that we are giving an opportunity to both sexes to participate in these whole class discussions. But I'm not arbitrarily picking females because I want more females involved with math.

I'm being purposeful about those decisions. You're being purposeful about education. Yeah.

Reuel Sample

So your second one is, you've got to center, your second C is? Contribute.

Amy Dunning

So contributing insider knowledge. And what I mean by that is I have a wealth of experience and expertise and I spent six years working on a PhD in education.

Reuel Sample

That's not easy to do.

Amy Dunning

It's not. It's not easy. And I wrote a dissertation.

I am an expert with qualitative data. And so really one of the things I try to do is to highlight teachers' voices. They are the experts in their classroom.

And so honoring what they say and do. And so taking what I have learned and contributing that to the policies that are being made for the teachers and students of New Hanover County schools. What was your dissertation?

So I kind of have already talked about it. My dissertation was in whole class discussions in math classrooms. If you would like to read it, you can go to the Journal of Mathematics Teacher Educators, JMTE, and it's published there.

Okay.

Reuel Sample

That's a first. I've never heard anybody say, go read my dissertation.

Amy Dunning

Well, that isn't the full dissertation. That's an article based on my dissertation. If you want the full dissertation, I can give you the 200 pages.

Reuel Sample

So one of the questions that has come up over the years in school board, board of education races, is how do you balance this expertise that teachers have in a particular area, whether it's mathematics or whether it's general education for the lower, with the expertise that parents have in their kids? And so how do you balance those two? Because you're a middle school math teacher.

There are things that you know about math that parents don't know, but they are experts in their kids. So how do you balance those two?

Amy Dunning

So first of all, there is no correct answer. There's not a one way solution, a one way fits all for this. From my experience, like you said, I am an expert in mathematics.

I am an expert in the pedagogy. The parents are the expert in families. They're the expert in their kids.

And so really it's working together. And I know that's hard. Teachers have so much to do, but even just starting off the school year and reaching out and always starting with something positive, something good.

So you're always starting on a good note. That way, when you get to later in the school year, whether there might be a behavior issue or an academic issue, you already have that foundation to reach out. And the parents also know that they can reach out to you because you've already established some communication.

So that's the first thing is just having that line of communication. I also think having parents informed about what we're doing in the classroom, since there is a lot of discussion around mathematics, not just having them know what we're doing, but inviting them in. I used to tell parents all the time, anytime you want to come, come to my classroom, come sit next to your kid.

And same thing for administrators and other teachers. If you can tell me a way to do it better, please. I want to do what's best.

Reuel Sample

What an incredible thing to see parents involved in that first sea of yours, to be watching them involved in that storytelling as parents come in to work, to be with their kids in their learning process. What an interesting, what a great thing.

Amy Dunning

And I think another thing is to bring the parents and families and siblings, bring them in and do a math lesson with them. And with administrators as well, because again, a lot of them were often taught in this memorization way. So bring them in and show them that there's another way to think about math.

Yeah.

Reuel Sample

And what it really comes down to is overcoming this distrust, I guess, between parents and teachers is that parents have often been dismissed, probably not often by teachers, but by school boards and teachers often feel threatened by parents. And it sounds like what you're trying to do is bridge that gap a little bit. And that's, that's a good thing.

Well, let's talk about that third one, cultivating. What is that?

Amy Dunning

So cultivating safety. So unfortunately we live in a time where we really have to prioritize safety in our schools. I think one of the things that stands out to me from a teacher perspective is that we have fire drills once a month.

We have shooter, active shooter drills once a year. Really? How often have we experienced firers?

How often have we experienced an active shooter?

Reuel Sample

Too far too many times.

Amy Dunning

And, and it's unfortunate, but the more you practice, the more you know what to do when, if, hopefully not when, but if it comes to be that you need to do something.

Reuel Sample

Are there practical measures that teachers can be doing on a regular basis?

Amy Dunning

Well, I don't know. Yes. Let me say yes.

So one of the things I have learned this recent year, where I'm at, is that the new Hanover County police department offers training. It's called ALICE training, A-L-I-C-E. It's an acronym.

It stands for alert, lockdown, inform, counter, evacuate. And so what happens is the police department comes in, they train, they trained us, they trained the teachers and administrators on what to do if there is an active shooter. They offer this for free.

And so I think we need to be making sure that all of our schools in new Hanover County are doing this free training.

Reuel Sample

Yes. Yes. Okay.

Amy Dunning

Yes. And one of the things within that training that I learned is different from how I taught, again, when I taught middle school, when we did our active training drills, we were taught to turn off all the lights, shut the blinds, hide in the corner, be as quiet as you can. Yes.

I would not say that it doesn't work, but I think there's a better way from what I have learned and that's like the fight run. If you think about it, I have this water bottle here. That would hurt if you would throw it.

It would hurt. It would at least distract long enough to, if you know how to disarm, you know, I mean, imagine if you have everybody in the class chucking water bottles at somebody.

Reuel Sample

So the big question is, and this is probably a curve ball. Oh gosh. Should teachers be armed?

Amy Dunning

I have mixed feelings on this. There's a part of me that thinks if teachers are trained and if they keep up with their training and feel comfortable, then they should be allowed. One of the things that security officer at one of my schools said that really resonated me with me is that they wanted to be the only armed person on campus.

Because if there is an active shooter and the police comes, the police know that the resource officer is the only person with a firearm. And so anybody else they see with a firearm, they're going to assume. They're going to fire at them.

They're going to fire at them. Well, what if that person is a teacher? Interesting.

Reuel Sample

Interesting.

Amy Dunning

And so again, I think it needs to be more of a discussion.

Reuel Sample

Yeah. And you're right. We've talked about this for years.

You and I, you're younger than I am, but we grew up in a day and age where we went to school and schools were safe places. You didn't have to worry about them. But now the question is, should schools be Fort Knox?

Should they be locked down? And you don't want kids to be prisoners in their own schools, but at the same time, they've got to be kept safe. So interesting.

That's going to be a tough thing. But to SROs, you're all in favor of. Oh, absolutely.

And we'll continue to put those in. What other safety issues are we looking at?

Amy Dunning

So I think one of the things that I've talked about is physical safety. But the other part that I want to think about as well is safety in the development of character for students. And what I mean by that is I have found that New Hanover County Schools does have a policy for character development.

And so I think really elevating that in schools to focus on how to develop students' character, I think that that could be a positive way to reduce some behavior issues. I know there's a lot of concern about consequences. And so focusing on that, I feel like could be an asset-based way to work with students.

Wow. Okay.

Reuel Sample

I like this kind of thinking. So I'm going to do a really quick lightning round here. Okay.

We have persistent post-COVID learning loss, especially in math and reading. I mean, we took the masks off, what, three years ago, four years ago? North Carolina was one of the last places to do it.

But our students are still showing signs of that. What are we going to do about it?

Amy Dunning

First of all, I want to say, not just academically, I think behaviorally and developmentally, there are also some issues where you have students who were in kindergarten, first grade, who were at home on a computer or were masked, and now they're in older grade levels, and they just didn't have the same experience. And so again, do I have an answer? I don't.

Reuel Sample

No, but you're aware of it.

Amy Dunning

I am aware of it. And I think for me, I always go back to the teachers are the experts in this content. I mean, I can talk about math, but what is it that they need to catch these students up?

Okay. And so I think talking with them, hearing their perspectives and their ideas, from a math standpoint, we have to make sure that students understand these basics before we can build to the more advanced mathematics. If not, we're leaving a whole generation behind.

Reuel Sample

And going back to your centering is that your whole view of this is that each student, each classroom is different. And so there might be some students that are perfectly fine. There might be some students who are hurt more, and our teachers need to be open to that.

And presumably, you'll start putting in policies or advocating for policies that will help them do that.

Amy Dunning

Yes.

Reuel Sample

Teacher pay. Okay.

Amy Dunning

I'm sorry, I want to go back to one other thing, because any teachers who are listening, I don't want to stress you out in thinking that, oh my gosh, I'm going to have to have a different lesson plan for every student. Oh my goodness. And I understand that.

And I think that there's a lot within that centering high quality instruction where you can differentiate within lessons. So using the same idea of building the conceptual understanding, and you're just tweaking certain parts to make it more advanced for some students or some other students who may need to kind of catch up a little bit. So in math, you can just change the numbers, and you're still doing the same thing, but you can differentiate using different number sets.

Reuel Sample

I would imagine that a lot of high quality teachers are using centering education.

Amy Dunning

Oh yes, absolutely. It's definitely happening. It's definitely happening.

I think making sure that it's happening across the board. Okay, okay. Let's talk about teacher pay.

Reuel Sample

We've got to encourage high quality teachers to come to New Hanover County. How are we going to do that?

Amy Dunning

One million dollars. Yes, teachers need to be paid more.

Reuel Sample

So we got to figure out how to do that.

Amy Dunning

Period. Yeah, it's a tough time to do that. It is.

So... I think it's taking a look at what we have, how it's being spent, and really being financially savvy to see are there any places we can make cuts, any places we can move money to making sure it's being spent in the most effective way for students and teachers to increase teacher pay.

Reuel Sample

I think most taxpayers are happy to pay. Well, not happy, but will pay taxes. They'll be less upset about it if it's being paid, abused wisely, or used wisely.

And what we keep finding out is that it's not.

Amy Dunning

And I think that goes back to, as well, transparency.

Reuel Sample

Yeah.

Amy Dunning

There's not transparency as these decisions are being made. And so that's upsetting when you find out, oh, this is how my money was spent. Why are we not including the public to an extent that all of the public has experienced education?

Yeah. So they all should have a voice in what's happening.

Reuel Sample

Very good. Very good. Finally, North Carolina is fourth in the country in charter schools.

10% of our students are in charter schools. 25% of our students across the great state of North Carolina are in charter schools, private schools, or home schools. You are running as an official for the public schools.

How are we going to mesh all that together?

Amy Dunning

So I think, ultimately, the parents get to choose what is best for their student. I know each child is different, and each child might need something different. So I think parents know that.

Like you said, the parents are the experts in their kids. So they can look and decide what is best. I think it is healthy to see that, OK, we have this percentage of students who are at these other types of schools.

What are they doing that we're not doing? OK. What can we do to make our public school system better so that we have students who are choosing to come there and parents?

Reuel Sample

Some good, healthy competition.

Amy Dunning

Well, I just think there's such value in collaboration and learning from each other rather than pitting ourselves against each other. Let's figure out what's working well, and let's do that.

Reuel Sample

We're going to have a lot more conversations together.

Amy Dunning

OK.

Reuel Sample

So the primaries are March 3rd. Yes, coming up. That is not that far away.

It's less than two months from this day of recording. January, February, March. That's what's coming up.

So how can people get in touch with you? How can they find out more about you in these next couple months?

Amy Dunning

Absolutely. So my personal cell phone number is 8 6 7 5 3 0 9.

Reuel Sample

OK, 9 1 0 in front of that.

Amy Dunning

No, I'm just kidding. 8 6 7 5 3 0 9. OK, just kidding.

Reuel Sample

I'm from the 80s. I missed that completely.

Amy Dunning

I have somebody out there got that. It's DrAmyDunning.com. Please go visit there to learn more about me and why you should vote for me.

You also can email me at AmyDunning29 at gmail.com and you can find me on Facebook.

Reuel Sample

OK, and please, Republicans, when you go to vote, you are voting for four people. Yes. Who will go up against four Democrats.

That is correct. In 2022, we swept the board for Republicans. Uh, we should do that again this year because quite frankly, and this goes back to talking about you as a Republican, is that quite frankly, the Democrats have not learned.

And if they are put back in power, you're going to see things like the gender ideology, the DEI, the quite frankly, the bad education policies that they have. And we can't we can't allow that to come back. Can't allow that to come back.

What we're looking for in the primaries, we've got five people running. We need to send four good ones up against the Democrats. Yes.

Sounds like you're a good one.

Amy Dunning

Well, I appreciate that. I feel like I have a lot to offer and I hope that I can use that here in New Hanover County.

Reuel Sample

Well, thank you very much. Thank you. And I look forward to having you come back.

And if you have any questions, please get in touch with Dr. Amy Dunning. And you have been listening to the Wilmington Standard. I'm Reuel Sample.

Thanks for listening. Thanks.

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