Every year, each school in Kane County is given the opportunity to choose a teacher to nominate for Kane County Educator of the Year. The award, sponsored by the Kane County Regional Office of Education, sees nominees from over 140 schools across the county, at each level of education from preschool through high school. This year, the GHS nominee is algebra and geometry teacher, Mr. Sutor.  

Mr. Sutor is a familiar face to everyone around the school. He’s a member of the prestigious Geneva High School Tie Club, and outside of the classroom he’s the sophomore baseball coach and strength and conditioning trainer for athletes. For Mr. Sutor, learning he was the GHS nominee for Kane County Educator of the Year was the capstone on an already whirlwind day.  

“I’m part of a fitness program that I sign up to and they share workouts online, and they just so happened to have a giveaway.” Mr. Sutor said. The giveaway in mention was a nationwide contest with a huge prize: a $5,000 gym makeover. After receiving upwards of 4,000 entrants from across the country, the fitness company chose Mr. Sutor as their winner.

“They coordinated with my wife and had her come to school and they called her on Facetime [while] they had a stream up on Instagram. I was upstairs training baseball players and I see my wife come strolling in and I’m like, ‘What are you doing here?’ and she had the owners of this company on Facetime on the phone, and they told me that I was picked for the home gym makeover.”

However, what Mr. Sutor didn’t know was that his day was going to get even crazier, as he was about to receive more exciting news. Mr. Sutor recalled, “About 10 mins after the first surprise, in comes Mr. Rogers and the teachers who are on the team to pick me, and he says, ‘So I heard you had a surprise, and I have a second one: our team has picked you to be our school’s nominee for Educator of the Year’.”  

‘The team’ in mention is a group of teachers, who were all previously nominated for Educator of the Year. The group, alongside the deans and administrative staff, helps to choose each year’s nominee; and this year it happened to be Mr. Sutor. The whirlwind experience of learning he was nominated doesn’t compare to the honor of the award itself, as Mr. Sutor has had to overcome his own personal struggles to get to this point.  

“Personally, I have a stutter. I’ve had it since I was born, and I got help from the time I was 5 and all through high school and through college, so I understand how much the extra help [from teachers] helps. I have overcome a lot to have the confidence that I’m going to stutter, I’m always going to stutter, but I have control over it and I can use that to help kids and show them that, even if you struggle with school or have personal struggles, you’ve got help here.

“There was a point where I didn’t know if teaching was for me, and that’s because I was having such a hard time with my own stutter and my own fluency. It was a huge hurdle, and I was having a hard time with it, and I kind of thought teaching wasn’t the right thing for me. This award means that I know I’m in the right place and I know that teaching is the path that I’m supposed to be on.”  

Be sure to wish Mr. Sutor good luck this week before the Educator of the Year Award Ceremony on May 3rd!