COE Graduate is 1999 National Teacher of Year

Andrew Baumgartner, a Georgia kindergarten teacher and UGA College of Education graduate, may use slightly unconventional methods, but his success in spreading the magic of learning has earned him the honor of being named the 1999 National Teacher of the Year.

"Sometimes they may seem a bit off the wall," Baumgartner said of his ideas, "but nothing tried is nothing gained."

Baumgartner, 46, will try just about anything to coax his kids to learn. He once held a wedding for Sleeping Beauty, complete with limousine and cake, and a knighting ceremony for Jack after he killed the giant in the beanstalk.

The Savannah native teaches at A. Brian Merry Elementary School in Augusta where 58 percent of the 530 students get free lunch, educators' most common measure of student poverty,

"Classes should be an adventure every day," said Baumgartner, one of four finalists selected by the National Teacher of the Year program. "They (classes) should be places where children discover... where failure is kept at bay."

Baumgartner graduated from UGA in the mid-1970s with a bachelor of science in education in speech and language pathology. He received a master's degree in early childhood education from North Georgia College two years ago.

He is the first Georgia winner of the national honor. For the past year, Baumgartner has been on leave to tour the State in honor of his selection as Georgia's Teacher of the Year for 1998 by state School Superintendent Linda Schrenko.

A teacher for 23 years, Baumgartener has battled his share of educational demons, even in his own family. He went through the pain of watching his son, diagnosed with multiple learning disabilities, fail in class and eventually drop out of school in frustration.

"He is one of the students who fell between the cracks," Baumgartener said in a recent interview with the Associated Press. "When a school fails a child, its fails an entire family."

His son, now 21, got his generally equivalency certificate and is enrolled in an Augusta technical school. The experience forced Baumgartner to re-evaluate his own teaching style.

"It turned me into the teacher who became the teacher of the year. I had to dig down deep and figure out who I was," he said.

Baumgartner, a former Marine, started out as a K-12 speech pathologist but decided to go into early childhood education. He said he never thought the littlest kids would be too tough to handle.

"They have a real thirst for learning," he said. "They're still very eager to try."

He also has fought to overcome skepticism toward male teachers, especially ones in the early grades. More than three-fourths of the nation's teachers are women.

"The stereotype was they had to be motherly women, maternal," he said. "I had to show that I could be paternal, which is just as good or better since many of these kids don't have fathers at home. Little boys in school need to see men succeeding."

Baumgartener said he was inspired to teach by his minister father.

"We were taught that we'd been so blessed by God that it was our duty to give something back. I did that by having a career in service," he said.

Baumgartner will spend a year on promotional tours as teacher of the year, kicked off with a ceremony at the White House today (Monday, April 19). The award is sponsored by the Council of Chief State School Officers and Scholastic Inc., the educational publishers.

Baumgartner wants to use his tenure to emphasize that teachers and principals should not be alone in setting high academic standards for schoolchildren.

"Everyone must be accountable for the public education system," he said. "That's why it;s called the public education system."
 

This 22-year teaching veteran said his greatest "kick" in teaching "comes when I look into the face of a young child and watch confusion turn to concentration, concentration to surprise, and, finally, surprise into the pride of accomplishment."