Introduction to Tom Kertes
Tom Kertes is a high school teacher based in Prince Rupert, British Columbia. Born in Ellensburg, Washington in 1973 and raised in Cheney, he moved to Canada in 2007 with his husband, Ron Braun, and became a Canadian citizen in 2014.
Tom’s background spans media, politics, and government policy, including work with Ontario’s self-regulatory College of Early Childhood Educators and as an instructor at Seneca Polytechnic in Toronto. With over seven years of early childhood education experience—including positions at UBC Child Care and as a K/1 teacher in Haida Gwaii—Tom has taught across early childhood, middle school, high school, and college levels.
Professional Values
Public education provides a universal, barrier-free foundation for acquiring knowledge and sustaining a liberal democracy rooted in human rights and the rule of law. At its core lies universal literacy—the essential precursor to liberty. Rather than imposing specific beliefs, education empowers students with the capacity “to know,” leaving it to each individual to decide how to apply that knowledge according to their own conscience. Ultimately, public education aims to prepare students to use knowledge independently and ethically within a pluralistic society.
From my educational leadership coursework at Vancouver Island University:
I am a teacher because I believe that human life is sacred, everyone is born worthy of unconditional respect, and human dignity is endowed, inherent, universal, infinite, and absolute. The recognition of human life as sacred is an expression of praxis, which according to Paulo Freire, is “the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it”. Praxis — reflective action — is humanization, a means by which the sanctity of human life is animated; it is how the sanctification of human life is both made possible and how it is realized.
Praxis is also at the heart of education. Praxis, as a form of learning, connects to Lev Vygotsky‘s conception of the zone of proximal development (learning
proceeding development) by how learning, in this sense, makes humanization possible. According to Vygotsky, “properly organized learning results in mental development and sets in motion a variety of developmental processes that would be impossible apart from learning”. This makes organized learning (education) a “necessary and universal aspect of the process of developing culturally organized, specifically human, psychological functions”. Praxis (reflective action) and learning (proximal development) are at the heart of “humanizing education”.
Professional Experience
I am a specialist in literacy instruction and its application. I have been a reading specialist, literacy coach, classroom teacher, college instructor and continuing education presenter, keynote presenter, and Early Childhood Educator.
Before teaching, I worked as a communications advisor, helping produce children’s educational television and other media. I was a production coordinator for Biz Kids, a nationally syndicated Emmy Award-winning educational TV series about money and business.
I also helped produce viral videos and media campaigns viewed by tens of millions of people, which were covered by the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, CBC News, New York Times, ABC News, Washington Post, the Guardian, and other news outlets.
Contact Tom Kertes
Phone/Text: 778-884-5343
Email: tomkertes@gmail.com