Plymouth’s own Catherine Stanley Alligood sits as the principal of A.H. Bangert Elementary School, a post she has occupied for nearly a decade of her 30 year long academic career.

The daughter of well-known Plymouth High School educator Virginia “Ginny” Garrett, Catherine grew up with a strong affinity for education. She also had her share of influential mentors that helped paved the way towards her foray into the field.

“My mom was a teacher at Plymouth High for many years. She taught English and literacy for many years,” Alligood recounts. “But there was also Alma Phifer. She was my biology teacher… I already loved science, but she really inspired me to get after it.”

However in those early days, even with such strong influences in play, Alligood resisted the call to become an educator herself.

“To start with, I honestly didn’t want to be a teacher because my mom was one, and I saw firsthand how hard she worked,” Alligood admits. “But it was the things that Mrs. Phifer did with us in the class, that strong hands on approach to learning, that really started to bring me around to the idea.”

Even so, a potential career in teaching remained in the recesses of her mind and Alligood instead looked towards the medical field.

After graduating from Plymouth High School in 1983, Alligood attended Meredith College where she initially toyed with the idea of pursuing medical technology.

“When I first went to college, I was thinking I was going to do medical technology, but I realize that I belonged in the classroom. I belonged in teaching,” she says.

Now fully committed to education, Alligood decided to marry that desire with her longstanding passion for science. After graduating from Meredith in 1987 with her biology degree and her teaching certification, Alligood embarked on her instructional career.

“My first teaching job out of college was at Pamlico County Schools. I taught at Pamlico County High School for about a year,” she recalls. “A little while after that, I moved to Raleigh where I taught science at Carroll Middle School.”

Always family oriented, Alligood took a backseat from teaching for a bit to stay at home and raise her children. A little while afterwards, the family would relocate to New Bern where Alligood restarted her educational career once more as part of the Craven County School system.

“A bit after we moved, I started to work as an elementary science specialist,” she says. “What that really meant was that I got to do all the fun science stuff with all the kids… that was so much fun that I ended up doing that for 15 years...”