School nurse to instruct students at career center

For 14 years, with the past seven at North Aiken Elementary School, school nurse Teresa Hayden applied Band-Aids to hundreds of children and also strived to help them feel safe and secure.

Now, she's taking on a different kind of opportunity as the new health science instructor at the Aiken County Career Center.

Hayden is by nature enthusiastic and outgoing. Her mentor for the next year will be cosmetology instructor Trina Greenwood. Hardly shy and retiring herself, Greenwood has laughingly told colleagues that she could barely get a word in during a recent conversation.

When the position became open last spring, Hayden was wary at first. She contacted family members and friends who are educators, and they encouraged her to pursue the job.

"It began to sound really exciting," she said. "I realized I could be responsible for encouraging and motivating a high school student to become a nurse, a pharmacist or a doctor - that I could make a difference in a child's life."

Hayden will teach Health Science I and II for juniors and seniors from five high schools, as well as a new exploratory class for sophomores. She'll join instructor Mike Miller, who teaches an emergency medical services class.

Career Center Director Brooks Smith was previously the principal at Aiken Middle School, about 100 yards from North Aiken Elementary. Hayden also served the middle school as needed.

"We have a strong health science program and wanted to move forward with it," Smith said. "Teresa has vast experience, and she will bring her knowledge and PowerSchool and data management tools. She developed a strong rapport with fourth and fifth-graders in classroom lessons. We know she will do a great job."

A native of Abbeville, Hayden and her husband Dean have two teenage children. She received an associate degree in nursing from USC Aiken in 1992 and, while in school and afterward, worked in a variety of positions at Aiken Regional Medical Centers.

Hayden then joined children's rehabilitation services with the Aiken County Health Department, serving as a case manager for 60 to 80 children with special needs. She worked with children and young adults ages 0 to 21 and advocated for their parents.

"It was a holistic kind of nursing care, looking at families' needs from the perspective of a public health nurse," Hayden said. "I discovered that this is where I should be, interacting with children and families."

Her work often took her into the schools, where she developed an interest in the roles of school nurses. In 1997, Hayden accepted that position at Douglas Elementary School in Edgefield County. She joined the North Aiken staff in 2003, where she did classroom lessons, helped coordinate a neighborhood "Walk to School" project and put out a yearbook.

"I wanted to be part of the whole process," Hayden said. "A lot of the students had socioeconomic, educational and physical needs. You can't meet the needs of one without the others."

When she meets her new students Monday, she is going to promise them a lot of hands-on learning and that she'll look for new collaborations with other staff members and such institutions as Aiken Technical College.

"I've got high energy," Hayden said with a smile. "I'm going to draw a giant heart in the middle of the floor and go through the circulatory system with my students."