Fort Sill names Instructor and Curriculum Developers of the Year

Fort Sill announced the winners of the Instructor and Curriculum Developers of the Year on Dec. 12.

The event is where Army and Marine Corps leaders were celebrated for their teaching skills.

Similar to naming a district school teacher of the year, Fort Sill takes its own spin with it. Depending on what they teach, instructors and curriculum developers competed to see who were the best in their field. The competition began in October, where the instructors submitted a video of them instructing their students and the IOY and CDOY board members chose who would succeed to the next round.

Altogether, they acknowledged eight winners with an honorary mention of Marine Corps instructors and curriculum developers.

“Today is the culmination of the whole competition, where the Instructors and Curriculum Developers who rose to the top during the competition (will be) receiving recognition,” Joy Feldman, Faculty and Staff Development Division Chief, said. “They’ll be receiving various medals. We have Marine Corps instructors as well, it’s not just the Army.”

The decision is based on a rubric.

“We look for someone who knows the subject matter,” Feldman said. “We look for someone who holds the bearing, someone who the students look up to, someone who uses different methods to deliver the instruction to the students to keep them interested. There’s several things that are listed, but that’s just a piece of the pie.”

When they win, they’ll continue on to the next round.

“When they win, they’ll be submitted to the trade off competition, which will be held after the first of the year,” Feldman said. “We just submit their package in January and they’ll hold another competition. The instructors, the criteria that they’re judged against is the same criteria that we used to select them from here.”

The goal is to recognize the best of the best.

“We have some great instructors out here at Fort Sill that work hard every day so they can train the best Army officers and soldiers that they can and prepare them to go out from here to the field,” Feldman said. “It gives everyone something to shoot for, even those who maintain a second, third or fourth place. It gives them something, a way of having an outlet to show people what they’re able to do and accomplish.”

Maj. Colin Soane, of the Australian Army’s A Battery 1-30th Field Artillery, said he was pleased to receive the award.

“It’s been an honor to receive this award and this recognition, particularly considering that I’m a foreigner as the Australian exchange officer at Fort Sill,” Soane said.

A desire to give back and pass on the lessons he learned in his own time to the next generation makes for a good reason why Soane teaches. An instructor for the Field Artillery Captain’s Career course, he instructs junior officers at the Lieutenant or Junior Captain rank to provide Field Artillery Support.

Soane’s experiences teaching will impact him, his soldiers and his country in many ways.

“Being in this position is an opportunity to give back as an instructor and invest in the next generation of officers who will go out not just to the U.S. Army, but to many other international armies like my own,” he said. “In my tenure here, I’ve been fortunate to train directly over 108 U.S. and international students directly, and 150 indirectly. It’s a great opportunity to give back and build on the lessons I’ve learned in my own career as a foreigner and as an Australian. A lot of the lessons that I’ve seen here and my own lessons learned I’ll take back to the Australian Army from my tenure here at Fort Sill.”

Soane’s reflections on instructors past molded his own instructional style.

“It’s not so much being an instructor as it is being a coach and a mentor,” Soane said. “It’s not merely about presenting some PowerPoint presentations every day. It’s about investing in those junior offices and being a coach or a mentor as you would to a sports team, taking the time to develop them as an officer and the other qualities required therein.”