Every year an award is given out to one of the best science teachers in Virginia from the Virginia Association of Science teachers. Several teachers are nominated and then the process of choosing a winner begins. This year biology teacher, Gehrie Bair got awarded as the Virginia science teacher.
“Mr. Blosser nominated me and then that went to the VA committee, which is a Virginia association of science teachers, and then they looked through all the applications and did a couple of interviews,” Bair said.
After winning the award for best science teacher in Virginia, Bair got to travel to receive his award
“I drove down to a hotel in Roanoke where they have the conference this year. Then they had a little banquet for all the people that receive awards,” Bair said.
At the banquet, several other teachers from HHS came to congratulate him for his accomplishment.
“It was pretty cool because there were several of my colleagues, the other science teachers took time out of their busy weekend to watch me get the award so that was nice to have”, Bair said.
Bair recalls his first year of teaching at HHS.
“I student-taught in 2000 with Mr. Glick here at HHS. That was my first full year of teaching,” Bair said.
Bair was born into a family of teachers, which influenced his desire to be a teacher.
“My mom’s a teacher and a lot of my aunts are teachers, so teaching was kind of in my family and it was one of the things that I had done even when I was younger,” Bair said.
Beyond his family, he was able to participate in teaching activities that furthered his abilities to educate.
“I was involved with a lot of camps and other activities like church activities and those kind of things where I was teaching all the time, ” Bair said.
