Teacher of the Month - Kurt Woolner

Kurt Woolner said that teaching is his second career. His first career was as a Branch Manager at FedEx where he worked for 19 years. When that career was not fulfilling he looked for something else. His wife was a special education teacher and he saw the wonder of learning and wanted to help children in that learning. So he became a teacher of new technology, a media specialist. He has been at Bennett for two years helping students and teachers navigate in the new technologys.

In describing his job, he said that it is not just teaching WORD, spreadsheets, PowerPoint, Social Media, etc. He said he really doesn’t care about those because when the students eventually graduate those will have changed significantly. What he wants to teach is nurturing curiosity, presenting the logical steps to problem solving, convincing students to have the courage to struggle to solve problems, etc. That is because "the tool is just the tool; it is the wielder of the tool that makes the masterpiece." In his view, “teaching is not just about blindly passing on the knowledge of the past, it is about building on the experiences of those who came before us and constructing the new understandings together to make the world that we want to live in.”