3MT Winner Spotlight | Kent Wetzel

I have worked for Frederick County Public Schools (FCPS) for more than 20 years. I started as a middle school social studies teacher. After that, I became a teacher’s specialist for academics for three years. I am currently a teacher’s specialist for leadership development, and I have done that for four years now.

Kutztown University is where I obtained my bachelor’s in secondary history teaching. I am finishing my master’s in multidisciplinary studies at Hood College. I expect to graduate in May 2023. I have enjoyed my experiences at Hood, but I have had some starts and stops with my kids being born.

Initially, I focused on social studies. I switched over to the multidisciplinary studies program when it was new, as it had been recommended to me. I wasn’t teaching social studies at that point, so it made sense to broaden my range of topics more.

I initially saw it in emails from April Boulton. My current job involves a lot of presenting to FCPS leaders and at conferences. Since I have spent a lot of time on my study, I wanted to share it in a forum, and 3MT felt like a good fit.

In my job, I do a lot of professional learning and professional development for school leaders. The thesis was about how the brain works, and I wrote it to help students retain information when they have a lot on their minds. They would be able to make better use of their work this way.

When you’re a teacher, you hope that you can design the learning aspects to be useful to your students. That was the main goal of the thesis.

As part of the competition, they shared that participants would do their 3-minute theses, and that audiences would vote on them afterward. The audience voted for me, which is how I ended up receiving the award.

There was a $500 cash prize, so that was a bonus. Ideally, I would like to present the research material again to other places. I hope that other people might find the research useful. Lots of people experience learning in their jobs and schools, but I think that people don’t always realize that learning has to be designed with the brain in mind. We can be more impactful if we teach with that in the back of our heads.

Three minutes is really fast. It feels like a thrill ride—it’s over before you realize it. You really need to think about the key highlights of your research and what you want to get across to your audience above all else. You need to distill down your high-level study to a broad audience. Timing yourself with your phone is a good way of practicing your presentation’s length.

That’s a good question. I currently plan to stay the course at FCPS. In the future, I would like to do more research in the same topics and share it in conferences. I would also like to be published if I can.

I am a big trivia guy! I love trivia, and I’ve tried out for different game shows like “Jeopardy” and “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.”

When I was teaching at Walkersville Middle School, I participated in No Shave November alongside several other teachers to raise awareness about prostate cancer. We actually had our beards shaved on the Today Show!

I am also an adjunct professor at Hood, so I am both studying at the college and teaching here.

Inspired by Kent’s research and accomplishments in education? Ready to #GOFURTHER in your career? Learn more about Hood College’s graduate programs, such as multidisciplinary studies in education, by clicking here.