‘Mature beyond his years’ teacher is celebrated as Wake County’s best
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Matin Maani was named the 2026 Wake County Teacher of the Year.
- Maani received a crown from Lindsey Evans during a coronation at Apex Friendship Middle.
- Hundreds of students cheered and confetti fell during Maani’s celebration.
Matin Maani was named the 2026 Wake County Teacher of the Year, but he didn’t get his crown until Thursday in front of hundreds of cheering students.
Maani, a seventh-grade social studies teacher, strode through the halls of Apex Friendship Middle School on Thursday in a coronation ceremony filled with cheers, confetti and the song “Celebration.” It culminated in Maani receiving a crown from Lindsey Evans, his mentor and 2019 Wake County Teacher of the Year.
“I’m at a loss for words, to be honest, especially after this wonderful celebration my whole school and community held for me,” Maani said in an interview. “I think it’s a testament to the power of community, like the idea of how people supporting one another and making sure that everyone is seen makes everyone feel celebrated.”
It was a celebration that Maani’s colleagues say the beloved teacher deserved.
“He’s just an exceptional teacher and somebody who is a model of what we really want to do as schools, which is lift kids up and prepare them for high school and prepare them for success in the real world,” David Cassady, Apex Friendship’s principal, said in an interview.
Named top teacher after only 4 years of experience
Thursday was a “proud mama bear moment” for Evans, an eighth-grade social studies teacher at Apex Friendship Middle. Maani was Evans’ student teacher in the 2021-22 school year. Even then, Evans said she saw Maani’s potential.
“I describe him to everyone that knows him as an old soul,” Evans said in an interview. “He is mature beyond his years. Even as my student teacher, he would pose the most thoughtful questions that made me step back and think, OK, what can we do to incorporate this or to do that.”
Maani, 28, has only been teaching for four years since graduating from N.C. State University in 2022. He was chosen for the Teacher of the Year award out of a field of 11,000 teachers in the Wake County school system.
“It speaks to the power of young novice teachers to be able to affect change,” Maani said. “And when there’s a school that prioritizes supporting them and makes sure that they have the resources they need to do great things, a school can bloom.”
A heart for middle school students
Middle school can be among the most challenging grades to teach due to the hormonal changes going on in the pre-teen students. But Maani said he’s felt compelled to work with middle school students, especially since the time he spent between high school and college volunteering in the Baha’i Junior Youth Spiritual Empowerment Program.
“I love working with young people and seeing how they witness the world around them and how they are at this beautiful time in their life where they’re transforming,” Maani said. “So, if you are able to be part of that transformation any way, shape, or form, even if it’s small, it brings so much joy.”
Evans said her 8th-grade students still have the biggest smiles on their faces when they see their former teacher.
“They’re cheering ‘Mr. Maani, Mr. Maani,’ which shows that even a year later he still played an important part in their life,” Evans said. “They know that he’s someone they can trust, someone that loved them then and still loves them now.”
Cassady said Maani is always putting kids first. There have been numerous times where Cassady said parents have come up to Maani to tell him how their child still talks about attending his social studies classes.
“He is educationally excellent,” Cassady said. “But also when you think about it as a school, he represents our school and our district incredibly well.”
Maani will represent the school district in the North Carolina Teacher of the Year program.
