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Trevor Montgomery: Third-grade teacher, Pleasant Gap Elementary School
In high school, Trevor Montgomery was the kind of kid others looked up to. As a student-athlete and someone who enjoyed coaching, the now longtime third-grade teacher at Pleasant Gap Elementary School said because of that, teaching just fell into place.“I did a lot of helping out with different sports programs and working with little kids, and I really enjoyed that,” he said. “I could tell they looked up to me and I also learned from a lot of good teachers I had who also coached. I think I always had this vision in my head that it would be kind of cool to be a teacher. That’s what steered me toward this path.”
Also, a father of two young children and husband to a fellow elementary teacher at Bellefonte Area School District, education is something he often brings home – his nearly 3-year-old daughter Kennedy, he said, “loves to play school.”
“She’s really into it – playing with us and her baby dolls – and I think she understands that we’re teachers,” he said. “She’ll say things like ‘see you after school’.”
Montgomery, a native of Bethlehem, graduated from Lock Haven University in 2011 with degrees in elementary and special education. He and his wife, Kacie Montgomery, then got married and began looking together for teaching jobs – first with offers in Virginia and then Reading and finally at BASD, which allowed them to stay in the Bellefonte community. Kacie is a first-grade teacher at Benner Elementary School.
“It’s always nice to have a wife, a spouse, that does the same thing as you, because you can come home and talk to that person because they get it,” he said. “We can bounce ideas off each other and it’s helpful in education.”
This school year, Montgomery has been working with student teachers from Penn State. For them, and all students aspiring to become teachers, the best advice he has is to “always do what’s best for the kids.”
“Think about your kids and your class, and what’s the best way to deliver the content,” Montgomery said. “It’s OK to modify or change something to make it appropriate for them. You’ll learn you sometimes have to adapt or change things because kids learn differently, and that’s OK.”
Time management and organization are also tips he has to be successful in education.
Montgomery has coached with the girls’ basketball teams at Bellefonte Area High School and with the boys’ basketball program at the middle school. While he’s not coaching anymore, due to spending more time with his family and baby boy Everett born in December, Montgomery said he still enjoys playing and watching basketball. He also said he enjoys spending time with family, being outdoors and taking summer vacations at Surfside Beach, South Carolina.
*By Brit Milazzo, public relations director, BASD
