Brandon Valley math instructor is Teacher of Year

BRANDON – When Allen Hogie graduated from high school, his parents asked if he’d chosen a career. Yes, the teenager replied, he wanted to be a teacher — a math teacher — like them.

He expected praise. Instead, his father looked him in the eye and said, “Well, I really don’t know if you have what it takes, Allen.”

Stung, Hogie reconsidered his career path, and a few months later he left Onida for South Dakota State University to major in agribusiness. It was a sad departure because in the weeks between high school and college, Hogie’s father had passed away.

Looking back now, Hogie thinks the insightful former educator, knowing he would not be there to encourage his son, used a bit of reverse psychology in that conversation.

Whatever it was, it worked. At the end of his first semester at SDSU, inspired by his math classes and instructors, Hogie changed his major to mathematics education.

“And, well, here I am,” he said Friday night, shortly before he was honored at halftime of the Brandon Valley Lynx football game for being named the South Dakota Teacher of the Year. The announcement was made Thursday at a banquet in Pierre.

Hogie will represent South Dakota as a candidate for the National Teacher of the Year Award, which will be announced in April.

“He’s obviously very, very deserving. He’s talented in all the ways we want a teacher to be talented,” said Brandon Valley High School principal Gregg Talcott.

“He knows his subject matter. He knows how to teach his subject matter to other people so they can learn. He loves his kids. His ability to mentor others. He’s worked with so many of our teachers over the years, now he has an opportunity to work with teachers across the state.”

Brandon Valley seniors also lavish praise on Hogie. Asked to give two words that describe their instructor, Levi McKercher offers “amazing teacher.”

Other two-word descriptions come from Sam Sperlich (“very energetic”), Austin Trevino (“energetic — very”) and Katelynn Erickson (“entertaining, easily-understandable”).

His students know Hogie will stop whatever he’s doing to answer their questions, Sperlich said.

“If you need help with a problem, you can email him, and he’ll take time out of his night,” Erickson said. “He’ll give a pencast — you can hear him and see him doing the work.”

Hogie, who said he benefited from mentors early in his career, has passed on that experience to countless other teachers. He advises anyone starting in education to turn to those with more experience.

“You latch on, you ask all the questions you can,” Hogie said. “I started at a very small school with not many people to confide in and grow with, but people would say, ‘I’ve got some ideas for you. Come in.’ ”

If he had stayed at Presho, Hogie said, his career likely would have taken the same path. But he followed his mother’s advice. She suggested that her son and his new wife needed to move away from parents and find a community in which they could grow. He interviewed in three places and received three offers. Brandon Valley was the school district that felt like home, Hogie said.

He called his mother at her home in Hendricks, Minn., on Thursday after learning he was Teacher of the Year.

In that first hour, Hogie said, he felt overwhelmed by what would be expected of him. The retired teacher offered another lesson over the phone.

“She said, you know, God is bigger than all your problems. He wouldn’t give you anything bigger,” Hogie said, then smiled. Lesson learned.

Allen Hogie

FAMILY: Wife, Jacque; son, Austin, a student at the University of Sioux Falls; mother, Susan Hogie, Hendricks, Minn.

EDUCATION: Sully Buttes High School, South Dakota State University for bachelor’s and master’s degrees. He is a National Board Certified Teacher.

CAREER: Two years at Lyman County High Schoo; in his 26th year at Brandon Valley.

HONORS: Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching, 2007; president-elect, South Dakota Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

TEACHES: Calculus, pre-calculus and geometry

ALSO: Coached football for more than 20 years.