Wilmington, NC News

Our future education leaders got a taste of what’s to come. UNCW was host Wednesday to Teachers of Tomorrow.

High schoolers from Jacksonville and Fayetteville who are considering a profession in teaching attended hands-on, professional development workshops focusing on technology and diversity in the classroom.

“There’s new technologies out there, and these are the worlds our students have grown up in, so we feel that’s really important,” said UNCW teacher recruiter Mark Phelps.

Teacher-in-training Antonio Brooks said, “Teaching is a great profession. It doesn’t come with bonuses or big pay, but you get a smile on your face when you leave everyday, you get happy students, sometimes you get grumpy ones, but you never know.”

Teachers are hoping this program helps inspire students to become teachers and help the shortage of teachers we have in the state of North Carolina.

Around 7:00 Tuesday night, firefighters responded to a fire at the Racine Commons shopping center. The fire started at Double Pearl Nails and Spa.

“We just were all hoping and praying that nothing bad happened to any of the other stores because one store going down is bad enough,” said Daniel Schronce.

The fire charred the nail salon, but fire fighters were able to keep it from spreading to the connecting stores.

“Luckily, the separation wall between the units held. There was some smoke damage that got through, but there was no fire damage,” said Chief Frank Blackley.

The smoke spread throughout other stores in the shopping center causing both people and merchandise to evacuate.

“We had a lot of smoke damage, so we got everybody out of the tanning beds. The fire department came and evacuated the whole shopping center,” said Kristi King of Timeless Tans.

For most of the stores the biggest headache was dealing with the smell, but for Double Pearl Nails and Spa, it’s a long road to recovery that could have been prevented.

“If sprinklers had been installed, the fire probably would have been extinguished by one head and the amount of damage would have been minimal,” said Chief Blackley.

It took firefighters about three hours to put out the fire. No one was injured.

Officials are still investigating the cause of the fire.