Walnut Creek Intermediate’s Brendan Hurd nominated for county teacher of the year

Brendan Hurd, who teaches seventh grade core, eighth grade history, English language development and cartooning, is the Walnut Creek School district’s nominee for Contra Costa County Teacher of the Year.

Twenty teachers from 17 public school districts are vying to be named  the top teacher.  To be in the top 20 is saying a lot, considering that  there are close to 8,200 teachers educating around 167,000 students in Contra Costa County, says Jonathan Lance with the county Office of Education.

The nominees  come  from K-12 districts and the Contra Costa County Community College District.  In May, the nominees will receive visits from a committee  of education specialists who will watch them at work in the classroom.  Then in August, three finalists out of this total 20 will deliver speeches at Mt. Diablo Unified School District’s new teacher orientation.

The winner of this year’s contest, whose name will be announced in September, will represent Contra Costa County in the state Teacher of the Year program in the fall.

If you know and like Brendan Hurd, or your child had a good experience with him as a teacher, it’s time to send good thoughts his way.

In his statement on his WCI web page, Hurd said he graduated from California State University Chico with a bachelor’s degree. After teaching in Fairfield, he spent a year teaching English to 7-9^th grade students in Japan. 

He currently works with the California History Project at UC Berkeley as a presenter and as a teacher coach.  He has also presented at the Bay Area Writing Project's Saturday Seminar series,  at the U.C. Davis History Summit;, and at two conferences of the California Council of Social Studies.