Editor’s note: In honor of Teacher Appreciation Week, Bonner County Daily Bee has chosen to spotlight a few of our local educators.

PRIEST RIVER — Business teacher Gary Stewart still remembers his first day of teaching at Priest River Lamanna High School in 1994.

“I was scared to death,” Stewart said. “I was 28 (years old) when I first started teaching, but it was terrifying. After 25 or 26 years in the business, if you’ve been in the teaching business this long, then you kind of realize it’s your calling.”

Stewart graduated from Priest River Lamanna High School in 1981 and attended University of Idaho, where he switched his major seven times at school before he landed on teaching. It wasn’t until Stewart was living in Texas that he became open to the idea of working at the school.

“My appendix exploded and I couldn’t really do anything, so when I got back to Priest River I started subbing for a buddy of mine,” Stewart said. “Then I found I really liked being in the classroom so I went back and finished my degree at U of I and I got my first teaching job here. This is the only experience I have. I have been at one school for that long.”

Stewart replaced his keyboard instructor, back when the school district was still operating on PC-MOS/386 computers. Stewart was the first teacher to have the internet at the school because he taught with computers every single year. He said he’s seen so many different versions of Microsoft office that he’s lost count.

“There is more power in a watch now than there was in the computers when I first started,” Stewart said. “I remember, I got onto the computer and watched this picture load and it came in like a pixel at a time. We get so upset when something is buffering but back then everything buffered.”

Now Stewart teaches four courses at Priest River Lamanna High School: Broadcasting, Intro to Computer Programming, Webpage Design and Marketing Economics. Even though students are unable to go to school due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he works in his classroom from 7:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. every week day on a period schedule to hold online office hours and create paper packets for his class. He said he underestimated the power of the student-to-teacher interaction inside the classroom.

“In my webpage and computer programming (classes) it’s nice to be able to look over someone’s shoulder and say, “You know that line of code, I think you need to check on that one,”’ Stewart said. “That’s the part we miss is the give and take in the classroom.”

Stewart said his Marketing Economics class has been the hardest to teach online because it is a graduation requirement as opposed to an elective class. He said he spends his days trying to create short and engaging videos to appeal to his students.

“The amount of technology has really changed teaching,” Stewart said. “It used to be mostly stand and deliver, treat kids as listing objects, now it’s just better for kids to be more interactive in the classroom, a lot more group work projects … I always heard this thing that a teenager’s attention span is age plus maybe a couple more minutes and I think all of us are kind of like that.”

Stewart and other staff members have been experimenting with online tools such as Google Classroom. Teachers at Priest River Lamanna High School also made a short video clip on how much they miss their students.

“I have done some green screen effects. I just put on a green sweatshirt where it looks like there is a floating head on the screen and I have done some crazy backgrounds with music for my econ kids just to see if they are paying attention,” Stewart said.

Stewart said distance learning has created more work than he anticipated, considering two of his classes already follow the online format: Webpage Design and Computer Programming.

“The workload has definitely changed,” He said. It’s different, it’s like preparing for a substitute teacher everyday. You know you are always thinking, “I should have put this thing on, I should have said this in my video.”’

But he is excited about the possibilities of integrating technology into his lesson plans long-term. He said teachers have been forced to prepare an online platform that can better accommodate student life and goals.

“One of the biggest changes I have seen in 26 years is you have a lot of these students now that will choose the homeschool option and a lot of the upper-level kids are taking online courses just as enrichment,” Stewart said. “I think it’s forced all of us in the teaching profession to have another option for kids.

“I can take that kid that was absent and maybe he has the flu or twists his ankle and has to sit at home for a week, now he has the option of going online because the teacher has already created a lot of those lessons.”

Although Stewart has been busy, he has found time to build almost an entire deck around his house. He’s still holding out hope on seeing the graduating seniors one more time and he is looking forward to the 2020-2021 school year. He said he’s got at least four more years left in his tank.

“I have (taught) the kids from some of my first students and some of those have their own kids. I don’t have any of their grandkids yet, but I hope I don’t get to that point because I will be pretty old by then,” Stew said with a laugh.

This article is in support of Teacher Appreciation Week 2020. To send a thank you to Gary Stewart email garystewart@sd83.org.

Aly De Angelus can be reached by email at adeangelus@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow her on Twitter @AlyDailyBee.