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Charles City teacher Voves to receive Wartburg Young Alumni Award

Charles City teacher Voves to receive Wartburg Young Alumni Award
Charles City teacher David Voves will receive the Wartburg Young Alumni Award at a reception tonight. (Press photo James Grob.)
By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

Writing and presenting formal speeches aren’t typically a part of the day-to-day routine for math teachers.

Charles City’s David Voves has been working on his speech for a couple of weeks now, trying to get the wording just right. He wants to include a quote attributed to Rita Pierson, the famous teacher, speaker and advocate for education who passed away about a year ago.

“Every child deserves a champion: an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection and insists they become the best they can possibly be,” Pierson said.

“I love this quote, but I believe Rita was incorrect in using the word ‘child,’” Voves said. “I believe the word ‘child’ should be replaced with ‘person,’ to make it ‘every person deserves a champion.’ God has blessed me with champions, and I would not be who I am today without them.”

Voves, in his 12th year of teaching at Charles City, will talk about that quote — and those champions in his life — tonight (Friday), when he receives the Wartburg College Young Alumni Award at a dinner and reception at the school in Waverly.

The award is presented annually to recent Wartburg graduates who have “shown ability to live out the four pillars of the Wartburg College Mission Statement— leadership, service, faith and learning — both personally and professionally.”

Alumni who graduated from Wartburg over the last 15 years are eligible for the honor. Voves is a 2007 Wartburg grad, and his continued passion for the school is confirmed by the personalized license plate on his car that reads “BST4YRS” in Knight orange and black.

“I chose Wartburg because of its closeness to my home town of Ionia, and I was extremely fortunate that I found a college that then met my needs personally and academically,” Voves said. “It fit my ideals, and challenged me and afforded me opportunities that I hadn’t even imagined.”

From Wartburg, Voves came straight to Charles City, hired out of college as a high school math teacher.

“I found my passion and believed in being a champion for kids,” he said. “I’ve had the opportunity in the district to grow professionally, be treated as a professional and be able to do what it is that I want to do within my classroom.”

Voves completed his master’s in education leadership at the University of Northern Iowa in 2011, then completed his instructional coach certification at UNI and the Central Rivers Area Education Agency. Voves and his wife, Renee, have two children. Renee is also a Wartburg alum.

Voves is currently one of five instructional coaches for the Charles City K-12 system, housed at the high school.

“My role is really to get to partner with and collaborate and walk beside teachers as they continue to learn and to grow, and I get to join them in that,” Voves said. “In this role, I’ve branched further out and learned how I can learn from my colleagues while still impacting student learning at a different level. It’s been rewarding in a different way.”

Voves is also an active faculty sponsor for National Honor Society, coordinates the annual freshman retreat and is on the board of the Community Excellence in Education Foundation, where he collaborates with teachers to write grants and bring innovation to their classrooms. He has also been instrumental in establishing the Comet Hall of Fame.

All that involvement at Charles City must have been noticed, because several of his Comet colleagues were among those who nominated Voves for the award or submitted a recommendation on his behalf.

“David has been a cheerleader and a coach for so many,” one letter of recommendation said. “He believes God has provided gifts to everyone and those gifts should be valued and honored wherever possible.”

Another recommendation noted that “David’s contributions to staff engagement and camaraderie make him an essential part of the team at CCHS and have had a profound positive impact on our entire district.”

Voves said he was not expecting to receive the award, and didn’t even know he was being considered.

“I was extremely humbled,” he said. “This is not due to anything I’ve done. It’s due to the 19 nominators who submitted papers and those kinds of things on my behalf. It’s because of their championship of me that has made me who I am today.”

Many of those 19 nominators will be at Wartburg tonight to support Voves as he accepts the award and makes his speech. Voves said that as far as he’s concerned, the award belongs to them as much as it does to him.

“Sure, my name is on the award, but the people who are going to be in that room with me are the ones who poured into me, and who I aspire to be. They’re the ones who really deserve the recognition,” he said.

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