Tom Michaud
Tom Michaud was born and raised in Marin County California, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. He has an energy level that is off the charts. He attended small private schools K-12. His class sizes in high school ranged from 10-14 students and his entire graduating class had just 80 kids, a large percentage of which were accepted to Ivy League colleges. Athletics, nightly dinners around the dining room table, spirited discussions about sports and history were a staple of his childhood. For the last 22 years Tom has been a 7th grade US History public school teacher. His love for history, teaching, and children literally radiates from him. He’s dynamic, articulate, and his passion for US History is infectious. He teaches in an Academy which is a school within a school in the Clark County School District, the 4th largest school district in the nation. During the pandemic he was required to start teaching remotely, however, early in the pandemic, the children were not required to attend class. Tom taught every single day to class sizes ranging from 50-80 students. He received messages from parents of students at other schools asking if their children could join his class (which for security reasons was not allowed). Very few people get to pursue their passions in life and even fewer get to make such a profound impact on so many. I cannot help but wonder what we could all accomplish by approaching education the way Tom does. If every teacher was given the resources that Tom has, could we improve literacy, improve graduation rates, and lower incarceration rates, as many policy reports and data show time and time again? I think we could. I know we can all do better for our children but in the meantime I sleep well at night knowing that his students year after year find themselves in a pocket of magic every day they enter his classroom.