Whether it’s with the Shield or his digital media classes, teacher Dave Winter always pushes his students toward excellence and leadership. This goal has taken him from school to school, but he has found his home at McCallum.

On Jan. 26 during FIT, principal Andy Baxa came on the announcements with the news of the 2024 Teacher of the Year. Streaming through the loudspeakers, Baxa announced a winner: Dave Winter.

In the following minutes, Shield adviser Dave Winter was presented with a celebratory cake from Baxa and the assistant principals as he was surrounded by cheering digital media and newspaper students.

Voting among the faculty happened the week before the announcement, and it was down to three finalists: Winter, science teacher Sarah Noack and coach Carlin Shaw.

Having covered and documented past Teacher of the Year announcements, Winter was in disbelief when the assistant principals revealed the news to him.

“[Teacher of the Year is] a familiar thing [to me] because we covered Adame winning last year, so it had the same ingredients, but I had a different role,” Winter said. “It was a bit of an unusual role because we [MacJournalism] are covering something ourselves.”

Although Winter had previously won the title back in 2018 at McCallum and was shocked by the announcement, Winter expressed his gratitude for the recognition his colleagues have given him.

“There’s a lot of great teachers here,” he said. “The fact that the teachers here think that I’m worthy of being recognized is pretty humbling.”

Winter expressed both excitement at his win and appreciation for the other candidates. He explained that he thought Noack deserved a turn at the title for her dedication to running programs at McCallum. 

“Ms. Noack is exceptional in multiple ways,” Winter said. “She’s good at creating a classroom environment where people want to be there, so that’s the No. 1 thing of being a great teacher. Then she’s also doing all this extra stuff like [organizing] the study abroad trips and advising the Link Crew, so I think [those] are above-and-beyond thing to do.” 

He also pointed out qualities that would have made the third finalist, Carlin Shaw, a great candidate for the title.

“A lot of people on campus don’t necessarily see what he does to help his students because it’s a different kind of teaching than traditional classroom teaching,” Winter said. “He’s helping SBS students and has a huge influence in helping them be successful.” 

His path to Teacher of the Year, and teaching in general, differed from what he had originally imagined his career would be. From his college years, working at The Daily Texan at UT, Winter thought that he would be a journalist, but changed his career path when he reflected on how much he loved journalism in high school and in college. He wanted to provide that same love to other students.

“[I love] this feeling of being surrounded by people who are doing [journalism] the right way, and you don’t have to worry as much about the business part of it when it’s scholastic or university reporting,” Winter said. “So I am blessed to have a lot of students who try to do the absolute best with their journalistic work.”

He has maintained that feeling from his previous teaching positions at Wheeler High School in Marietta, Ga., and Grady High School (now Midtown High) in Atlanta to McCallum, and enjoys the community that his current school has to offer. Winter finds it rewarding to be part of a collective experience such as the one McCallum provides.

 “When you are a part of that [community], and it’s bigger than just you,” Winter said. “There’s no better feeling. We have had that here, and there have been a lot of people who have helped make that community meaningful.”

Winter has taught only journalism for the second half of his teaching career. Before journalism, he taught topics like English, economics, and U.S. and world history. When he taught at Wheeler, he was offered the position of yearbook adviser.

“I started doing yearbook and eventually I started [working with] newspaper because we decided to combine the staff and make one big leadership team,” Winter said. 

After a while of teaching both subjects, however, Winter realized that newspaper was what he loved most, and wanted to be involved with primarily. 

“I realized that as much as I loved doing yearbook, the newspaper was my specialty and the thing I can help with the most, and I got to where that was my thing,” Winter said.

For the past nine years, the highlight of working at McCallum for Winter has been seeing the good in people getting to be so hands-on with the McCallum community.

“I like writing stories about the people doing great things here,” Winter said. “I know journalism is sometimes bad news, but I like catching people doing the things that make [this school] great and then telling that story and having my students do the same.”

Senior Shield co-editor-in-chief Alice Scott is grateful to have been in Winter’s newspaper class all four years of high school, describing it as a rewarding experience she’s thankful for.

“I think that it comes down to Mr. Winter’s leadership of the program and his ability to keep on making opportunities for people to succeed,” Scott said, “while also always believing in his students to succeed.”

Scott also feels that Winter is a great role model, deserving of the award due to his dedication to helping his students understand and produce news, photographs, and the paper.

“Everything he does is for the students to learn,” Scott said. “He is good at letting this be a student-led publication [and he teaches] us to step up without forcing us to. It’s important because it teaches us executive function and making decisions ourselves.”

Scott also appreciates how Winter doesn’t just cheer them on for newspaper duties, but also for other extracurriculars staff members have.

“He doesn’t just support us when we’re pursuing excellence in the newspaper program, he’s always supporting us, no matter what it is,” Scott said. 

Principal Andy Baxa admires that Winter is passionate about the topic that he teaches and can pass that on to his students.

“You can tell he really loves journalism and loves photography and getting that new story out, and you can see that it’s contagious among his editors and staff reporters,” Baxa said. “The people in the program are always relentless, and I feel like they take the lead from Mr. Winter.”

He also thinks that Winter deserves the award for all the hard work he does to keep the school community up to date.

“He does so much that goes unnoticed for the school, the students and for our community,” Baxa said. “A lot of people rely on MacJ to know what is going on at McCallum and just having that resource available is amazing.”