Keil Hileman II
Kansas Teacher of the Year
Monticello Trails Middle School, Shawnee, KS
Grades 6-8, Social Studies, Museum Connections

My teaching philosophy
Explore! Empower! Excel! My duty as a professional educator is to take my students through these three phases of learning. While each student has different needs and abilities, they all have the ability to use the concepts listed above as a measure for success in their academic and social lives. I believe it is the teacher’s responsibility to determine what it will take to enable students to Explore the world they live in, Empower themselves with useful learning, and Excel by applying that knowledge to achieve educational and personal goals in their everyday lives. The profession of teaching touches many lives. It is truly something everyone can believe in and support. I have been fortunate to work in a building, district and community that supports and believes in their professional educators and the students we teach.

I truly believe all students can learn. Each student has a unique learning style and pace, and I work very hard to inspire my students in many different ways. I use videos, lectures, guest speakers, projects, our Museum’s artifacts and other visual and hands-on activities. Once students are motivated, they can create additional projects and products in The Classroom Museum. This leads them to their own individual sense of accomplishment by learning about the subjects we are studying. The challenges I place before my students help them grow socially, academically and intellectually. I use multi-level or tiered assignments, which allow students to achieve success at many different levels. While some students only complete the initial level of the assignment, other students’ abilities allow them to go much farther and accomplish more. I use these assignments to give students an opportunity to foster their creative skills. (E.g. custom designed timelines, charts, graphs, projects-models, or research on artifacts.)

My philosophy in action
My compassion for my students, my empathy for the challenges of adolescence, my creative methods used to motivate and educate, and maybe even my tenacity to never give up and never give in, make me an unusual educator. My current and former students will tell me, “You have the most amazing teaching style we’ve ever seen.” I used two Civil War bullets to teach American History. This sparked so much interest in hands-on learning that I asked my students to bring artifacts to share in class. Later, a student named Jason delivered an amazing letter regarding his artifacts that changed my life forever. Jason’s grandmother wrote me; “If you promise to never sell them and always use them to teach, they are yours to keep.” This was all because Jason had gone home and shared our amazing class discussions. This event marked the birth of our Classroom Museum.

I currently teach lessons every day surrounded by pieces of history such as a: 1790’s Slave Collar, 1796 Flintlock Musket, 1898 Brass Cash Register, 1920’s Porcelain Barber Chair, 1907 Nickel & Cast Iron Stove, 3000 year old Chinese Coin and countless others artifacts because of my partnerships with students, parents, and my district. Nine years and thousands of donated artifacts later; I sit on the threshold of breaking history in our state and nation.

There are many rewards in teaching. The most important lies in the growth that I am allowed to foster in my students with every contact, comment and shared moment. I thrive on the look in their eyes when they “get it” or when they are excited to understand a new concept for the first time. These moments are priceless. Students take these learning achievements and build upon them to change who they are as people. These achievements enable them to excel for the rest of their lives. This constantly ignites a commitment and dedication in me that pushes me to excel in all that I do in regard to teaching my students. I enjoy making social studies and World History come alive for my students. I use any and all means to “reach” a student. When students are motivated and inspired to learn, there is no limit to what they can achieve. I ask unusual questions, design projects, explain strange objects and employ a variety of teaching strategies in my classes. I encourage all students to take an active role in my classes. I gain their input and opinions on class projects, and I often let each class choose an individual path of learning for different units. This directly motivates them to work with me and learn planning and organizational life skills.

Teaching offers me a career to which I can devote all of my talents. I constantly use my education in history, archeology, art, engineering, and mathematics. There is no limit to the creativity, motivation and love of learning that can take place in my classroom. It is all up to me. It is my duty to organize students, parents, and my faculty to help create the most beneficial learning experiences. Student learning and motivation inspire me daily. I simply love working with them. They are my passion. My students learn and grow in our created historical learning environment. They love the hands-on and creative activities I facilitate for them. I am a teacher that keeps them on their toes and occasionally surprises them. They rarely know what new adventure awaits them in my class each day. They also enjoy the real world connections in my classes. I have a responsibility to provide and assure their success in my school and beyond. I model and teach: team work, compassion, problem solving and critical thinking in all my classes. I would not be satisfied if I did not prepare them for high school, Vo -Tech Institutes, college and their future lives. This is why I will do anything, try anything and create anything that will help my students learn and grow.

My greatest teaching accomplishment
This Fall I started teaching a new class called “Museum Connections,” with a curriculum designed by me to support the regular social studies classes by using Museum Artifacts, Internet Searches, hands-on Lessons, Video Clips, Discussions and Student Created Projects. I have been teaching grades 6-8. This will increase my annual number of students from 100 to 550. The Museum will soon move into a new room approximately twice the size of a regular classroom. Monticello Trails will become the first public school with its own permanent Museum. My students use all their senses every day in Museum activities. This leads my students to higher level thinking skills and problem solving activities linked to real historical events.

The unique and creative tool I use to motivate and teach my students has now become a permanent entity that will last beyond me. The Museum is not only a place of learning for me and my students, it has become our community’s Museum. I am proud of my work on our Museum. However, it is the learning, productivity and growth of my students, combined with the unending trust my community and district have placed in me, that has made our Museum what it is today and what it will become in the future.

The most critical issue facing educators today
Many issues and challenges face public education today: funding, teacher retention and shortages, teacher education programs, school safety, a growing number of “at-risk” students, increased diversity of student needs, curricular alignment between states and even a perception of teachers as non-professionals in our society. However, there is one challenge that stands out above all the others, The Information Revolution and Age of Creativity.

The growth of the world knowledge base and development of new technologies have created the largest challenges public education has ever witnessed. “Faced with the rapid incursion into people’s daily lives of a knowledge explosion which sees the world’s knowledge base double every eighteen months, largely through technological development, traditional education functions and forms have been fundamentally challenged.” (Dr. Neville J. Scholfield, University of Newcastle) Dr. Lawrence Roberts, one of the inventors of the Internet points out, “the Internet doubles every six months, four times faster than transistors per each computer chip…. Creating an Internet medium which all other media will travel through by the year 2007.” The leaps and bounds that our educational system has made in the last 100 years are very small compared to what we will have to do in the next 100 years. There is a tidal wave of information and technological change coming that most Americans are unaware of. Dr. Lawrence Roberts states, “While the Internet keeps growing, faster and larger, the number of users is also growing. When the number of users reaches saturation, the broadband width and high speed of the Internet will continue quadrupling each year, just like it has for the past 22 years.” (ComputerUser.com Inc. - interview) This will lead to a cost-effective medium for every form of communication; television, radio, movies etc. This means every video, radio broadcast and television show, past and present, will be accessible to anyone, anywhere at anytime. Many scholars point out we are on the verge of a new age in human history, “We have gone from Agriculture to Industry to Information. Now we are entering the newest era: The Creative Age.” (John Kao, Harvard Business School)

If you consider our world to be a river, then times of incredible change would be “rapids” or “white water” on the river. I believe we are in the middle of The Technology and Information Age and witnessing the birth of the Age of Creativity. These amazing changes or “White Water” challenge us to continually improve our educational systems to meet emerging student needs. This is a time of constant change or “Perpetual White Water.”

Education will need to become increasingly creative, flexible and adaptable to help students become life long learners in an ever-changing world. We will still need to provide our students with a “base knowledge” of our culture and history. We must focus on these curriculum outcomes: Research and Communication Skills, Critical Thinking, Teamwork, Information: Gathering, Formatting, Presenting and Creativity.

Our students will need many skills to succeed in The Age of Information and Creativity. For the first time in history, we are seeing wealth created from information and creativity alone. The Microsoft Corporation was not founded on diamonds, gold, land acquisitions, or any other tangible item, but solely on creative ideas that allowed people to manipulate information in novel and unique ways. Access to information allows success to occur.

While technology connects the world in unique ways, our educational system must make every effort to keep students connected to, and prepared for, the real world. Permanent business and community relationships must be established to help schools attain these goals. Education and business partnerships will help schools keep their obligation to stay connected to technological changes and current life skills to insure future student success.

Teacher education programs must be dedicated to teaching educators how to utilize current technologies and understand how they will apply to student’s daily lives at home and on the job. The concept of being a life long learner must be fostered in professional educators, and passed on to their students and surrounding communities.
The number of credits required for high school graduation increases each year. Yet, the number of student contact days rarely does. Our system adapted to meet the needs of the Agricultural Age by using spring break as a time to harvest hay or plant crops and summer break as a time to harvest the majority of crops. The Information and Creative Ages will require us to reorganize our academic years for increased time to motivate and educate.

Ways to resolve this issue
The future that “Perpetual White Water” offers is unclear and uncertain. In the past, schools have been reactive in their attempts to change, leaving students continually behind. However, constant changes ahead may not allow us to predict and be proactive. I believe the answer may lie between reactive and proactive. Education will have to stay connected to current technology. Staying current is not guessing about “what may be” or settling for “what was.” It means working hard to utilize and learn from the technology and information “that is.” I see no other effective way to meet the monumental challenges that The Information Revolution and Age of Creativity pose.

Education is not facing these challenges alone. Our nation, local businesses, neighboring nations and every person around the world are facing this “Perpetual White Water” of technological change, information tidal wave and the need to foster creativity. We must be forever vigilant in our search for creative and unique solutions to help us meet the educational needs of our students and prepare them for the society and world these changes will bring.

Education as we know it today will be challenged in the 21st century. With regards to the challenges presented by “Perpetual White Water,” I am committed to keeping myself, my team, faculty and district motivated, inspired, positive, innovative, and productive, for the students we educate and the communities we serve.

One thought to inspire other teachers to succeed You will never truly know the impact you have made as a professional educator. You must do your best to make the world a better place one day at a time. Three words that work as a guide are: Explore, Empower and Excel. When I was selected to become Kansas Teacher of the Year... I promised my students, family, parents, faculty, community and myself that I would:
	explore all of the opportunities made available to me as KTOY
	empower myself and those around me with what I had learned and how I had grown
	excel in everything I did as their representative

These are the same expectations I place on my students every day. These three words I put together 8 years ago to form a cohesive middle school team concept, have in-turn changed my life by helping me to define and expand it. If you choose not to adopt these words... then find some that will help you define and expand your own life because as a professional educator, you will be doing this for every student you reach, teach and touch.

One lesson every student should learn
After teaching about almost every major world religion, I have noticed that they all come down to two basic points or concepts: respect all living things and learn as much as you can. These may seem simplified, but their power is overwhelming if studied with regards to real historical or current events. The power of simplicity of thought is amazing. It is a lesson of possibilities every student should see and experience.

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