We are pleased to announce that Thomas E. Dean, Immediate Past President of the NAfME Eastern Division, was named Brandywine School District’s Teacher of the Year this past spring, which put him in the running for State Teacher of the Year in Delaware, along with 20 other teachers, this month.
Thomas Dean is the Music Department chairperson, choral director, and audio engineering and Theory of Knowledge teacher at Mount Pleasant High School in Delaware. He was also a member of the Music Writing Team of the newly updated National Core Music Standards.
“When I first went off to college, I had no intention of being a teacher, and every intention of being a performing musician—with the dream that one day I would be playing Chopin on the stage of Carnegie Hall,” he recently told the Delaware News Journal. “It wasn’t until the end of my sophomore year that my entire focus changed and I knew that I had to teach.”
As one colleague put it on the Brandywine School District Facebook page, “A fantastic teacher and such a champion for his students and the arts!” And a former student followed up with, “Best teacher ever!”
Congratulations, Thomas Dean!
Catherina Hurlburt, Special Assistant, October 24, 2014. © National Association for Music Education (NAfME.org)
