The Lincoln County Retired Educators Association named Bristol Consolidated School teacher Chris Perry its 2011 Teacher of the Year Oct. 20.
Perry, 45, of Damariscotta, plays several roles at the school. He teaches health and physical education, coaches baseball, jump rope and soccer and holds the titles of athletic director and head teacher, a position following only the principal on the school’s chain of command.
A native of Nobleboro, Perry is an alumnus of Nobleboro Central School and Lincoln Academy, where he was a four-year letterman in soccer, wrestling and baseball. He graduated from Springfield College in Springfield, Mass. and taught physical education at Trinity, a K-12 Catholic school in Manhattan for two years.
“I loved the school but I didn’t enjoy the city,” Perry said. His mother sent him a clipping of the advertisement for the Bristol job and he flew home to interview.
“This was where I wanted to be eventually, in this area,” Perry said. “All my family is in this area.”
Perry returned in 1990 and has been at Bristol Consolidated School (BCS) since. In addition to his current responsibilities, he’s a former coach of the school’s basketball and wrestling teams, as well as the Lincoln Academy wrestling squad.
His enthusiasm isn’t difficult to spot. “I still love what I’m doing,” Perry said. “I think I have the perfect job.”
Perry said he enjoys the opportunity, as health and physical education teacher, to work with students across all grade levels.
“Every age level has their challenges and their positives,” Perry said. The youngest students are “so innocent and so fun” while those in grades 3-5 “really seem to embrace the learning of different things” and junior high students bring a little more maturity and understanding.
Perry also enjoys his administrative duties – as head teacher, he stands in for the principal in her absence – and his role as athletic director. “I love the sports, I love coaching,” he said.
Perry has seen a number of changes in his 21 years, including what he calls “the way we’re teaching everybody instead of teaching the majority.”
“When I was in school, if you got a failing grade – next chapter,” Perry said. Today, junior high students “don’t move on until they can prove that they have the knowledge,” he said.
In Perry’s field, there’s a focus on fitness that represents “a huge change since 20 years ago,” he said.
In the past, physical education “was just basketball or just games,” Perry said. Today, “It isn’t always about just games.”
BCS students participate in a swimming program at the Wiscasset Community Center and Perry organizes a variety of non-traditional activities, like archery, canoeing, orienteering and snowshoeing.
The school joined the National Football League’s Fuel up to Play 60 initiative this year. The NFL program encourages students to eat healthy and get active for at least 60 minutes every day.
Perry is working with the school to establish a fitness room with exercise bikes, free weights, treadmills, yoga mats and other equipment. The room, in addition to providing a workout space, would give classroom teachers the option to give students a short break from academics.
Perry envisions a facility that appeals to staff and faculty, too. “I think that we have a staff that would really embrace that,” he said.
While he enjoys his present role and has no immediate plans to make a change, Perry has his assistant principal’s certificate and he didn’t rule out eventually continuing his education and/or moving into an administrative position.
The Teacher of the Year honor came as a surprise, Perry said, and, while he’s “very appreciative,” he’s also uneasy about being singled out.
“There are so many good teachers in this AOS,” Perry said, referring to AOS 93, also known as the Central Lincoln County School System. “I don’t think I do anything different than anyone else.”
BCS Principal Jennifer Ribeiro is less shy about extolling Perry’s virtues. In her letter in support of the award, she called Perry “an integral part of the school; he is the oil that keeps the cogs moving smoothly.”
As athletic director, coach and physical education teacher, Perry “balances the need to push kids to take on challenges with the support they need to feel safe,” Ribeiro wrote.
Perry, in addition to his array of official responsibilities, chairs the Diversity Week Team, organizes the annual eighth grade rafting trip and fills the “no less valued roles” of “fundraiser, mentor and friend,” Ribeiro wrote.
Perry’s “warm, approachable manner, great sense of humor and commitment to kids makes him invaluable,” Ribeiro wrote.