Steve West teaches English as a second language at Panther Creek High School in Cary and was named the school's teacher of the year for 2010. He has been teaching at Panther Creek High for two years. West also was recognized as teacher of the year at Apex High School two years ago.

West graduated from the University of Nebraska at Carney in 1988. He has since earned a masters degree in counseling while continuing to teach.

West has two children - one plays volleyball at Elon University and the other plays soccer at Apex High. In his spare time, West trains for triathlons and will run his first marathon in September.

Q: You were awarded Teacher of the Year at Panther Creek High School this year. Was there something in particular about this last year that made it so special? At the beginning of the year, I found out that I was accepted to be part of a teacher exchange program. So I traveled to Bangladesh from the middle to the end of March.

Bangladesh was incredible. I worked with a Bengali teacher who had had experience in the United States. I taught in his school, and we were to exchange and observe one another's teaching practices.

Q: How did you end up in Bangladesh? Very few people know anything about Bangladesh, and I had two students from there, so they were my motivation for going there.

I really wanted to live in their world and see the way they live through their eyes so when I came back I would have a renewed understanding of what it's like for my students when they come in.

Q: How does teaching in Bangladesh compare to teaching in Wake County? It was very different. I taught 450 students, grades six through 10, at an all girls school, and my smallest class was 45 [students]. My largest was 95.

We were all crammed in a very small room. There was no planning period, we got 30 minutes for lunch and I taught seven classes per day. I had virtually no access to technology while I was there.

Q: What was it like inside the classroom? Every school in the country is using same textbook for history, Bengali, for everything. It's a very prescribed lesson.

Teachers' manuals tell you exactly how much time to spend on everything to prepare for the massive test students take in the tenth grade to determine which universities they'll go to. Teachers aren't given a whole lot of latitude or independence to stray from the curriculum.

It was so much fun, though. By the last lesson, I had 15 to 20 teachers coming to watch me teach. It was some of the most rewarding teaching I've ever done.

Q: Did your trip out of the country give you a different perspective on the drama that goes on in Wake County? In the whole scheme of things, when I look at everything that's at our fingertips, I'm almost embarrassed to show pictures of Panther Creek because it's so nice.

When we drove throughout the countryside to go to some of these schools, we saw houses made of bamboo and tarp, and there were up to 15 people living in that space. The houses were maybe 10 by 10 feet.

Q: If you could give advice to other ESL teachers, what would it be? Just to not lose touch with the way that their students are feeling when they walk through your door. We can get so caught up with day-to-day procedures, and it's easy to get overwhelmed with administrative stuff. But you need to push that aside and really tune yourself in with your kids.

Q: If you could change one thing about Wake schools, what would it be? We need more teachers. That's the bottom line.

For ESL, we have small classes because they need that attention. But in my English 1 class, I have 35 students. So what happens is, they can't all get the attention they need.

What I've seen over the past couple of years is that I'm manipulating my curriculum to do less language teaching and more trying to help them understand information from other classes.

So for me, I've been doing less language teaching and more tutoring. If we had more teachers, they'd get the support they'd need.