As a child growing up in Annapolis, Md., and in Beaufort County, Tina Petty always knew she wanted to teach.

“I pretty much always knew that’s what I wanted to do,” she said in a recent interview.

Petty would spend her spare time as a child recruiting her siblings to play school. Later, as a student at Bath High School, she found great satisfaction as a tutor to her fellow classmates. When those classmates told her what a good job she was doing, that cemented her decision to pursue an education degree.

She was particularly drawn to mathematics

“Numbers came easy to me,” she said. “Math made sense, and I liked it.”

Since earning her bachelor’s degree in secondary math education in 1993, Petty has spent her entire teaching career with Beaufort County Schools č first as a teacher at Chocowinity High School and, later, at Southside High School.

She has been teaching in the same classroom since Southside High School opened its doors more than a decade ago. She teaches all types of math, from algebra to advanced-placement calculus.

And the 39-year-old joked that she has been teaching so long that she is “getting ready to have my students’ children” in her classroom in the next few years.

As part of her job, Petty said, she particular enjoys “getting to know children of all different backgrounds and seeing them be successful when so many of them think they can’t.”

Petty said she doesn’t have one particularly memorable moment in her teaching career, but, instead, she has a series of memorable moments when her present students or past students come back and thank her when they are successful.

“I am really excited when they come back and visit,” she said. “That’s really what it’s all about.”

Like many in her profession, Petty doesn’t enjoy the paperwork that comes with being a teacher.

“I know it needs to be done, but there’s too much paperwork that takes away from the time I give to the students,” she said.╩

She had praise, however, for Beaufort County Schools Superintendent Don Phipps’ effort to reduce the paperwork load on the county’s teachers over the past year.

Petty said that she encourages many of her students to pursue a career in teaching, and some of her former students are either working as teachers or studying to become teachers.

“It’s a very rewarding career,” she said.

She has been chosen Southside High School’s Teacher of the Year twice. She and was recognized by the Beaufort County Board of Education for receiving the North Carolina Council of Teachers of Mathematics Outstanding Secondary Teacher Award.

She is the co-author of two Algebra I and Algebra II activity books that are sold nationwide.

As a student of mathematics and numbers, Petty said there’s only one other job that she would consider doing č working as an accountant “because it’s all numbers.”

“But I don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t be a teacher,” she said.

Tina Petty

Age: 39

Place of birth: Annapolis, Md.

Family: Husband, Jason Petty, a science teacher at Beaufort County Early College High School; children, Caleb, 11, and Sarah, 7

Education: Graduate, Bath High School, 1989; bachelor’s degree in secondary math education, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1993; master’s degree in math education, East Carolina University, 2009

Professional activities: Mathematics teacher at Southside High School, chairman of the school’s five-member mathematics department; advisor to the Mathematics Club at Southside High School

Hobbies: Cake decorating, gardening and traveling during the summer break.

Other activities: With her husband, serves as a youth soccer coach and youth director at Second Baptist Church in Washington.