Fountain
As a new school year is underway, we’d like to take salute all of the excellent schoolteachers in our area. There are few public servants from whom so much is asked, whose educational requirements are so extensive, and whose professionalism is so critical to inspiring future generations.
Teachers are underappreciated generally. Yet you likely can recite from memory the name of a teacher who made a difference in your life, showed you something in yourself that you never knew you were capable of, or simply explained something in a way that made you see. We consider that a gift, and we are grateful for teachers who continue to impart their gifts year after year.
Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. is fortunate to have a number of gifted and dedicated teachers, and so is our community. Even as the demands placed on teachers continue to increase year after year, dedicated professionals keep coming through for our community’s kids.
It has to be a challenge for BCSC to select just one teacher to name as teacher of the year, but its track record suggests the local school system has chosen well. As The Republic’s Jana Wiersema reported last week, 2022 Teacher of the Year Veronica Buckler, who teaches English and social studies at CSA New Tech, is one of 25 finalists for the 2024 Indiana Teacher of the Year. That distinction is one that also was shared with BCSC’s 2020 and 2021 recipients, Mindy Summers and Stacy Doub.
And for 2023, BCSC selected Northside Middle School social studies teacher Molly Fountain as Teacher of the Year. Fountain’s been teaching at the middle school level for 15 years — a feat she acknowledges gets a certain kind of reaction.
“You’ll tell someone, ‘Oh, I teach middle school’ and they’ll be either horrified, or like, ‘Oh my gosh, thank goodness there are people like you,’” Fountain told Wiersema. “But I don’t think there’s a better place to be.”
Middle school can be especially challenging for teachers and for students, but Fountain has a gift for educating young people at that level.
“They are so full of energy and funny and willing to kind of roll with whatever activities I decide to do,” she said of her students. “But yet you can still have a good conversation with them too. They’re mature enough that you can have really meaningful, important conversations. So I know it’s intimidating to some people, but I don’t think there’s anyone cooler than middle schoolers, to be honest.”
We are happy to associate with those who would say to Fountain, “Oh my gosh, thank goodness there are people like you.”
But that doesn’t just go for Fountain; it goes for all the dedicated K-12 teachers in our community. It’s a hard and sometimes thankless job, and educators feel a calling they dedicate their professional lives to answering in service to younger generations.
Congratulations to Molly Fountain, and best wishes to Veronica Buckler on the prospect of being selected Indiana’s Teacher of the Year. Gold stars all around.
