Brandon Burdick teaches a student at the ODU Saturday Morning Art Classes
Brandon Burdick has been a Portsmouth Public School Art teacher since graduating in 2007 from the ODU Art Education Program. This year he was awarded Teacher of the year at Douglass Park Elementary School.
Out of over 60 staff members, 5 of the teachers were nominated as candidates for teacher of the year. Brandon authored a paper on pedagogy and his ideas and creative teaching practices pushed him to the top.
His nomination will now be forwarded to the district level, where they will select the elementary teacher of the year for Portsmouth, then the teacher of the year of Portsmouth, then the state.
Brandon explains his award winning ideas:
“By utilizing humor, passion and trust, coupled with breaking down information to the simplest parts and cross-curricular knowledge, I have created an effective and safe learning environment, not to mention a place where students’ can enjoy expressing themselves.”
Brandon Burdick as featured on a local news channel 10 in 2008 for his ability ot organize a school wide art exhibit in Douglas Parks Elementary School.
Mr. Burdick credits the ODU Art Education Program and its Service Learning approach to teaching for preparing him to be an outstanding teacher. Specifically, Mr. Burdick mentionsr the Saturday Morning Art Classes (SMAC), in which ODU Art Education students design and teach area school children every fall:
“SMAC classes were the final preparation before student teaching. They opened my eyes to the necessities of prior planning, organization, and preparation. Without the SMAC classes to open my eyes my student teaching experience would have been a rough transition.”
Art Education at ODU 
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