Jeremy Adams '98 Wins Teaching Award
Jeremy Adams, a member of Washington and Lee’s Class of 1998, is on a roll. He’s got a new book, “Full Classrooms, Empty Selves: Reflections on a Decade of Teaching in an American High School,” about his 14 years of teaching government and macroeconomics at Bakersfield (Calif.) High School. And he’s just been named Kern County Teacher of the Year.
“I had to get over myself and realize that sometimes the magic isn’t going to happen for every student,” Jeremy told the Bakersfield Californian in a recent interview. “Now I have much more patience with my students and more faith in my fellow teachers to be the one teacher I wanted to be.”
Jeremy is a 1994 alumnus of Bakersfield High. He has a B.A. in politics from W&L and an M.Ed. from Cal State Bakersfield, where he is an adjunct lecturer in political science.
As a teacher at Bakersfield High, he founded the Earl Warren Cup, an annual competition that tests students on their knowledge of government and civics trivia. National figures such as former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and television news anchor Diane Sawyer record the questions for use in the competition.
This isn’t the first honor for Jeremy. He’s also received the Jim Burke Rising Star Teaching Award and the Kern Reading Association Outstanding Student Teacher Award. His book has won the 2012 MMB Boutique Book Prize from Middleman Books for a new author. As the county teacher of the year, he goes on to represent Kern County in the 2012 California Teachers of the Year competition.
To read more about Jeremy, see his website, www.authorjeremyadams.com.
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