Mark Weimer, technology education teacher at Apollo High School, comes from a family of teachers, the majority of them teaching math and English. However, growing up, becoming a high school teacher was the furthest thing from his mind.
Weimer’s father, a previous industrial arts teacher, became his math teacher in seventh grade.
“He [my dad] would set up a race track in his classroom, and he would drive in circles with his mountain bike,” remembers Weimer. “He would give stopwatches to everybody and would purposely crash his bike into a stack of papers once a term or once a class. This time, he set me up. He had me sitting next to his desk and a bunch of papers. He crashed and knocked me over and a bunch of papers. It was really embarrassing. But, that was his thing.”
Moments like that steered Weimer away from teaching and following the family path. Instead, he wanted to be a golf teaching professional.
“The PGA has a teaching program [at universities] to teach . . . the business side of golf course management. So, I was on that track and then I was kind of bored,” explains Weimer. “Just as a release [and] because I was undecided, I took a woodworking class (which I already knew how to do because of my dad) and an industrial design class because I really liked to draw. I just started taking more of them because I really enjoyed them. One day my professor asked, ‘Have you ever thought about teaching?'”
Weimer responded, laughing out loud, “Not really!”
His professor had noticed Weimer helping all the other students in the class and pointed it out to him. It clicked. Weimer switched gears and obtained his teaching license, meshing both his love for industrial arts with his knack for teaching.
“I really did find my own path to teaching,” he says.
Weimer student taught at Apollo High School and was excited to come back after working at other districts. He has loved teaching there since. It’s the variety of what he teaches that keeps him motivated and passionate. He feels that the environment and support at Apollo allow him to try new things, even starting with darkroom photography. He built the program from the ground up and had the students build out the labs and update the spaces.
“That is one great thing about the District,” says Weimer, “there’s a level of autonomy here that I don’t think you find at other districts. If you’re going good with something, they let you go with it.”
Many people have the misconception that taking industrial arts (now referred to as career and technical education or CTE) classes means you’ll be able to fix a car, change your oil or fix some things around the house. To Weimer, it’s looking at the big picture: building up industry, community and businesses.
Several local businesses invest in and partner with the CTE program at Apollo because they are cultivating their future workforce, but also because many of them are Apollo grads themselves. Weimer’s proud but very humble about the relationships he’s built over the years with local businesses. And building relationships is important to him; it’s one of the reasons he carries his love for industrial arts into his personal life as well.
Early in his career, he was a substitute industrial arts teacher in Alaska. He’s maintained a great relationship with the school district and many of its teachers. He travels to Alaska every summer to spend time with family and friends, fish (for crab, shrimp, halibut and freshwater fish), photograph nature and build cabins.
Being in Alaska gets his creative juices flowing whether it is building a cabin or spending time with his family and hobbies.
“I used to go up there really for the photography and hiking,” says Weimer. “Now, I go up there to eat fresh fish. There is nothing better!”
Over the years, Weimer has thought about going into the industry field, but he knows Apollo is exactly where he is supposed to be. Even though it’s far from where he thought he’d be, he couldn’t be happier.
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