Engineering and AP Computer Science teacher Rob Bell is the lucky winner of this year’s Teacher of the Year award. Every year,  the staff at Starr’s Mill are required to select one teacher who they believe fits the title best. 

“I was very shocked when the [administrators] walked into the room, but I was humbled very quickly,” Bell said.

Bell enjoys the students and the environment in the classroom and how it operates when students are hard at work. 

In his classes, Bell makes it a habit to tell students how it is and to not sugar-coat anything. He also likes to focus on project-based learning in a real environment and problem solving. 

“I tell you how it is to make you better. I tell you my story so you don’t repeat my mistakes. You deal with problems everyday. Life happens,” Bell said. “Giving them the problems in an engineering frame allows them to work through the process and overcome.”

This is Bell’s fifth year teaching at Starr’s Mill and his 20th in the county. Before Starr’s Mill, he worked at Fayette County Middle School for nine years, five years at Sandy Creek High School, and a year at JC Booth Middle School. His inspiration for teaching came from his grandmother.

“I changed my major many, many times. I couldn’t figure it out,” Bell said. “Every summer, in between changing majors and colleges, I worked at a summer camp and taught. It wasn’t until my grandmother looked at me and asked, ‘What did you do this summer, and the summer before that?’ Then I had a lightbulb moment.”

Engineering was not his first pathway choice. Bell has a dual major in elementary special education. His pivot to the engineering field happened during his sixth year of teaching middle school.

“Mr. Bell is fantastic,” Principal Allen Leonard said. “He provides an outlet for our students to do things that may not be available in other places in the school, or even outside of school.” 

Away from teaching, Bell is in charge of both Starr’s Mill and Rising Starr’s TSA program, the Career Technology Student Association, which allows students to engage with STEM pathways. He also is the advisor for the Vex Robotics Club.

Bell will now complete his application for Fayette County Teacher of the Year. 

Congratulations, Mr. Bell.