DeKalb County High School has announced this month’s Student, Teacher, and Parent of the Month Awards, with individuals recognized for their outstanding work.

This month’s Student of the Month went to DCHS Freshman Katya Hennessee. Katya is the daughter of Brad and Renee Hennessee, and is originally from the Ukraine, having only been in the United States for five years. Teachers are amazed at how well she has learned the English language in such a short amount of time. “I knew like 40 words (English) in the Ukraine,” Katya said. “I learned most of the language here.”

“I like all of the positivity in this school,” Katya said. “My favorite subject is math and I’m a member of FFA.” Katya said her family have two horses, Willow and Coffee, and she is excited that they are moving to a new house where she can ride and take care of the horses.

This month’s Teacher of the Month went to a substitute that has gone above and beyond, Ginger Caplinger. “I’m absolutely overwhelmed,” Caplinger said tearfully. “I’m just floored. It’s nothing that I would have expected.”

Caplinger has been working as a substitute for six years, and is currently teaching sophomore English for Ms. Jessica Griffith while she is on maternity leave. She is the daughter of the late Frank Evans and her mother Faye Evans, and she is married to her husband, Rusty. Together they have three children Caroline, Katherine, and Andrew.

“She has full on accepted the role as a full-time teacher for those students,” Assistant Principal Thomas Cagle explained. “She has been doing everything in and out of the classroom. She’s helped us with watching additional classes on top of the classes she was assigned as a substitute. She was out for a little while, and while she was out she was still assigning work for all her students and grading papers. I’ve never met a sub that has even attempted to do something like that while they weren’t at work at all.”

“She’s just above and beyond any of our expectations to help us out as a substitute and a teacher,” Cagle continued. “She has basically been a fulltime teacher while she’s been here and we just wanted recognize that.”

Another award was presented posthumously to a student who recently suffered a tragedy. Our Parent of the Month was picked from an essay written by a student who lost their parent last month,” Cagle said. “That student, Kaydence Thompson, wrote the essay in honor of their mother, Mel Thompson, who passed away last month.”