CHHS teacher Travis Adkison chosen as finalist for CTE teacher of the year award

On March 13, Chapel Hill High School Fire Academy instructor Travis Adkison was recognized as one of 24 finalists for North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching's 2025 Career and Technical Education Teacher of the Year award.

Adkison is known as an educator that truly cares for students and wants them to succeed in both the fire service and their personal lives, Scott Hackler, Chapel Hill Fire Department training captain, said.

"He holds them accountable — he wants [the kids] to understand that when there's an action, there's a reaction," he said. "Last week, he called me [and] he was working through a water supply chapter with them, and some of the kids got really technical, and he actually went down that rabbit hole [with them]."

Adkison said he started his career as a junior in high school, working as a volunteer firefighter in his home state of Pennsylvania. He said after graduating high school, he went straight to college where he got his bachelor’s degree in history before getting his master’s in education.

While he originally planned to coach sports and be an athletic trainer, he said he realized that it would be difficult to do both at once and ultimately chose coaching.

“Well, if I'm gonna coach then I should be a teacher, which I also had some background in because my mother, she always wanted to be a teacher, and she never had that opportunity to do that," Adkison said. "So I was like, why not try to be a teacher?” 

His previous experience in the educational field sets him apart from other CTE teachers, he said, who usually come from technical fields. He said when he was growing up in Pennsylvania, teaching fire services was not offered, so he only discovered that teaching in that field could be a career option once he moved to North Carolina.

As a teacher, Adkison said he hopes to make the local fire service representative of the community it serves.

"We need to have more women in the fire service, we need to have more Hispanics and Asians and all of these different demographics, regardless of anything," he said. "These are the people that are in your community, so these are the people that need to be protecting your community.”

Ashley Saldana Ramos, a volunteer at Wyckoff Fire Department and one of Adkison’s former students, said he helped her when she felt lost. 

"I didn't know what I wanted to do, and it was junior year, so it was kind of like crunch time, but finding out that my school had this department was amazing, and since I took his classes, it's been really clear on what I wanted to do," she said.

Saldana Ramos also said Adkison once helped her and other students prepare for an interview portion of a fire service competition. She said he encouraged them to get into the mindset of an actual interview and he maintained a positive attitude throughout the competition. 

Orange High School lost their fire instructor at the beginning of the semester last fall, Hackler said, and Adkison took time away from his program to step in as the temporary fire instructor so the students could at least finish the semester.

"I can help people — why wouldn't I want to make the community better or help people when they're in need?” Adkison said. “Ultimately, I'm going to need help sometime, and I want people to help me out, too.” 

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