When she was a first-grader at Manter, a tiny town just 10 miles from Colorado in southwest Kansas, Lori Gunzelman got her first taste of teaching.
“She was so far ahead of the others in her class that the teacher asked her to tutor the little Hispanic kids in English,” said her mother, Iolan Jackie Jensen.
That may have planted the seed that led Gunzelman into teaching.
Whatever the genesis, Gunzelman has excelled. On April 2, she was named one of seven 2014 Kansas Master Teacher Award winners. Gunzelman teaches math at Andover Central Middle School.
Master teacher awards have been given annually by Emporia State University since 1953. Among the other six this year was Kathleen Wilhite, daughter-in-law of Humboldt resident Doris Wilhite, and now retired from teaching mathematics at Olathe South High School. Her husband, Carl, grew up in Humboldt.
Gunzelman, in a presentation at the awards ceremony, said her focus wasn’t just on math in the classroom.
“High expectations for all students is a driving force in my classroom,” she explained. “It is my expectation that all students will grow mathematically but also build social and responsibility skills.”
Some of Gunzelman’s unique classroom projects include a Barbie Jump, in which students calculate how many rubber bands Barbie needs to survive a bungee jump from football bleachers; using specifics from game shows to study simple and compound probability; and creating projects to explore three-dimensional geometry.
Gunzelman, a 1990 graduate of Iola High School, begin teaching in 1994 after earning her bachelor’s degree in secondary education from Kansas State University, with endorsements in math, physics, chemistry and earth science. In 2000, she earned a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction from Wichita State University.
In addition to Andover, Gunzelman is an adjunct instructor at Butler County Community College, El Dorado, and Friends University, Wichita.
She has taken special training in administrative aspects of education, including how to deal with bullying and weapons. She is a frequent presenter at in-service workshops in several school districts.
She and husband Paul have two daughters, Kaylee, 16, and Cara, 15.
