The Carbon School District recently announced their 2020 Teacher of the Year. This year’s award went to Carbon High School Teacher, Wes Thompson, who sat down with Castle Country Radio to speak about how he got started in teaching.
“I joined the Navy right out of high school spent six years in the Navy, was stationed in Orlando, Florida, went to school down there. I was in the Naval Nuclear Power Program so yea, they taught me how to operate nuclear power plants on ships which is cool. I was in the Navy for a total of six years. My wife and I got married during that time, she’s actually the reason why I got into teaching,” said Thompson. It was several years later when his wife decided to go back to school to become a teacher that Thompson himself gave it serious thought about pursuing a teaching career as well.
“I was able to, with my degree and everything, I was able to get into the alternative route for licensure, which is a program that Utah State offers for teachers to get licensed and I yea I started teaching. So right now, I’m teaching, well I taught two classes of modern math, I taught a computer ed hardware class, and IT fundamental class – which is also a computer class; I teach financial literacy and also was a debate coach this year, first-year teaching debate,” stated Thompson. Before teaching at Carbon High, Thompson taught at Mont Harmon Middle School and at the Light House before it was combined with Carbon High this past school year.
Thompson is a go-getter and always willing to find something new to learn so that he can possibly share that knowledge with his students, which is why he recently obtained his Real Estate License. “Honestly, what I’m certified to teach, I look at a list because I have what you call a CTE Certification which is more of the business, and those types of computer classes and I looked there, and it said yea I was qualified to teach real estate and I thought that would be, might be a good option for students to learn as well,” said Thompson.
As for what Thompson is up to this summer, he explains, “Actually this summer, right now, we are wrapping up our debate season. We had five young ladies that qualified to compete in our national tournament, which is great. That’s going to be virtual, so that’s going to be here this month. Then actually just getting ready for that next school year. I’ve got my fingers crossed I’m planning we have a normal first day of school so I might be one of those optimists but that’s what I’m planning for and just getting ready for that,” explained Thompson.
If you see Mr. Wes Thompson out among the community this summer be sure to congratulate him on a job well done.