Each year, a Shawnee committee selects a teacher who has been nominated by their peers for the Teacher of the Year award, which lauds individuals who have made significant contributions to the Shawnee community and to teaching in general. Our most recent Teacher of the Year is Mr. Rohm, who says he feels incredibly honored and touched to receive the award.

Having worked at Shawnee for twenty-three years and taught for twenty-eight, Mr. Rohm credits his co-workers, who “work as a team and care about students,” a supportive administration, and the students that he says motivate him every day to be a better teacher as he watches them grow and achieve. In particular, he enjoys collaborating with other teachers, watching students devise new means of presentation and explanation that “address individual learning styles,” and a teacher’s satisfaction of colored dry erase markers on a whiteboard.  

The importance of effectively designing lessons that relevantly and excitingly address different types of learning cannot be underestimated. Mr. Rohm believes in classrooms where it is safe to make mistakes, where students use mistakes to learn and try again, and where teachers adapt through sharing experience with other teachers and “being open to new approaches and ideas from others.”

In fact, he believes so many Shawnee teachers are deserving of awards and recognition. “A good teacher first of all cares,” Mr Rohm says. “Making connections, finding out how a student’s day is, saying hi in the hallway–simple examples of letting students know you care.”