learn | your schools
Chasing Greatness:
Alachua County’s Teacher of the Year BY CHRISTINA LYNCH
for a teaching position in Alachua County, with the intention of giving back to the school district that had shaped the person he had come to be.
And as soon as you meet him, you understand why the sixthgrade advanced world history teacher from Howard Bishop Middle School was named Alachua County’s 2020 Teacher of the Year.
“I chose Howard Bishop for two reasons,” Tapley said. “First, as a fresh faced 23-year-old, I knew that my confidence to get students to buy into what I was saying would be way higher with 11- and 12-year-olds, than it would be with students who were 17 and 18. Secondly, I never went to Eastside, but I did go to Bishop. It was that sense of loyalty, and the opportunity to teach in a program that did a lot for laying the foundation of who I am as a person, that was the majority factor in why I chose HBMS over EHS.”
In the fall of 2006, Tapley was an eighth-grader at Howard Bishop who was “prematurely” trying to figure out what he was going to do with his life. Luckily for him, he said, it all became clear when he walked into history class. “From the moment I first crossed the threshold of the doorway, thrusting me into an environment that combined both love and academic rigor, I knew I wanted to be a teacher,” he said. “The feeling that Dr. Morris injected into my life on a daily basis in his class was something that I knew I needed to do for others.” After graduating from the University of Florida with his Masters in Secondary Social Studies Education in 2016, Tapley searched
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The search went well, and he was offered jobs at two Alachua schools: Howard Bishop Middle School and EastsideHigh School.
I hope my classroom is a place where they learn organization and time management, and I hope that the routines set in place carry over to their lives outside the classroom. - KIRK TAPLEY
Photo courtesy of Kirk Tapley
Sometimes in life we come across people who radiate passion. The ones you could sit and listen to for hours, just because they’re so excited about what they do. The ones who respond with, “How much time do we have?” when you ask about their favorite part of their job. When Kirk Tapley walks into a room, you know he’s one of them. He’s a dancer, a Gator, and a John Cena fan. But he was born to teach.
