Name: Devon Teran
Number Of Years In Education: 8
Role: Assistant Principal, Alta Vista Charter High School (Kansas City)
Devon Teran grew up in Wichita with parents who were educators. In fact, his father served as superintendent of Wichita Public Schools before moving to Grandview nearly a decade ago. (Ralph Teran recently announced his retirement from that post.)
While a student at the University of Kansas, Devon says he realized that teaching was his passion and after he graduated he became a high school English teacher in Kansas City, Kansas.
After five years of "evolving" as a classroom teacher he spent two years as an instructional coach in KCK. This, he says, was how he learned how much he enjoyed studying what he calls the "craft of teaching."
"It's like playing the guitar," he says, which he also does in his spare time. "You want to sit and tinker with these skills like playing a chord, putting chords together. Teaching has skills like that —answering a question, talking with a kid. You have to practice."
This summer, Devon moved to a new position as an Assistant Principal at Alta Vista Charter School in Kansas City, Missouri.
This story is part of KCUR's 'Teaching It Forward' project, which looks deeply at the changing nature of the teaching profession in the Kansas City metro.
