His Story
Tom Jenkins came to teaching by accident. A 19-year-old Wright State University student, he volunteered to help coach a middle school football team, met a teacher and coach named Jeff Whitt, and was so struck by how Whitt cared for young people that he switched his major to education. He earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Wright State in 1997, a master’s in science teaching there in 2000, and a Secondary Engineering Education Certificate from the University of Cincinnati in 2018. He is a National Board Certified Teacher, certified in 2004 and renewed in 2014.
He taught 8th-grade math, algebra, science and American history at Springfield City Schools from 1997 to 1999, then spent 25 years at Greenon Local Schools, teaching 5th through 8th grade STEM, science and technology. His entire 27-year career was spent in Title I schools, one urban and one rural. He now works as a Museum Education Specialist at the National Museum of the United States Air Force.
In 2009, as part of the first cohort of Dayton Regional STEM Center fellows, he asked his district to start a STEM course. The first class was 25 fifth graders identified as gifted or with special learning needs. They chose to tackle their cold, energy-wasting 60-year-old school, bought a thermal imaging camera, mapped the building’s heat loss, helped maintenance add insulation, and presented to the Board of Education. A year later the repairs were still in place and saving the district over $100 a month. The community asked for STEM for every student, and after 15 years of program building, hundreds of Greenon students take STEM as a daily core subject.
Beyond the Classroom
Jenkins coached or advised for more than 50 seasons, including basketball, football, baseball, soccer, track, Science Club and Student Council. His council students shipped video game systems and care packages to an Ohio National Guard unit overseas, collected thousands of food items for the Enon food pantry and delivered holiday gifts to over 100 families. He planned and chaperoned 16 weeklong 8th-grade trips to Washington, D.C., hosted six student teachers, and served as district STEM coordinator for 12 years, securing over $300,000 in grants. In 2022 the village of Enon named him Grand Marshal of its Fourth of July parade.
In 2018 he received the Lemelson-MIT Excite Award, and then formed an after-school InvenTeam with 14 volunteer students. Their invention earned U.S. Patent #11230836, “System for Collecting Debris.” That work led to training as a Master Teacher of Invention Education for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Among his many other roles, he has been a NASA SOFIA Airborne Astronomy Ambassador, a NOAA Teacher at Sea on an 18-day research cruise, the Boeing Science Laureate at Teaching Channel, a 2022 Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow with the U.S. Navy, a Department of Defense STEM Ambassador and a board member of the Engineering and Science Foundation of Dayton Fund. He was an Ohio State Teacher of the Year finalist and a 2024 finalist for the Presidential Award for Excellence in Math and Science Teaching.
Philosophy Into Practice
Every unit in Jenkins’s classroom ended in a design challenge. Students kept an engineering design journal, took a pre-test and post-test to measure growth, and worked in teams that wrote their own code of cooperation, set design goals, drew private blueprints and then shared them before building. After several rounds of redesign they reflected on what worked and what did not. Each step had a sign-off checkpoint, which let him catch problems early.
When half of the class’s underwater robots floated and half sank, he paused testing for two days and had students build density columns to understand neutral buoyancy. He ties projects to real careers, and once worked with the Springfield-Beckley Airport so that each of 120 students spent a day on flight simulators, jet maintenance, model vertiports and drones.
“If you ensure that your lessons are relevant, linked to the community, and have overt career connections, you will not only leave your students with meaningful memories but could also change the trajectory of their lives.”Tom Jenkins
In His Own Words
“Students are not passive recipients of information but active participants in their educational journey.”Tom Jenkins
“At its core, my philosophy is driven by the belief that every student possesses the potential to be an innovator and a problem-solver, given the right tools and environment.”Tom Jenkins
“”Failing forward” and reflecting and learning through our mistakes are not only normal but also a valuable part of the learning process.”Tom Jenkins
What Others Said
“He is a fantastic educator and fierce advocate for STEM education within the classroom.”Jim V. Shaner, assistant principal, Greenon Jr./Sr. High School
“When I think of Tom Jenkins, I think of adventure, passion and a person that instills excitement about STEM both in and out of the classroom.”Heidi Edwards, colleague, Oakwood High School
“I don’t just consider him an educator, but a reliable friend who I can go to with anything.”Braelynn Cameron, former student
“He is by far one of the best science teachers I have had the privilege to know and work with.”Greenon school board member and Wright State University faculty member