What Nick Gentry experienced from JCCC’s faculty members years ago is what he hopes to bring to a high school classroom when he lands his first teaching job.

“I would not be where I’m at today – with a master’s degree in education and prepared to teach high school business – if not for JCCC,” Gentry said. “I never found a JCCC instructor I couldn’t get along with. They all seemed to care, and that is what I’m determined to bring into my teaching style – a true sense of caring.”

Gentry got a late start with his college education. After managing a Sears store for many years, Gentry wanted to do something different – something that would touch people’s lives. So, at age 42, he enrolled at JCCC.

“I needed a small, intimate setting to get started and to build my confidence,” he pointed out.

One of Gentry’s first JCCC classes was Introduction to Writing.

“My instructor taught me how to write … really write,” he recalled. “She taught me how to write a sentence that made sense. She gave me the confidence and the praise I needed to continue and the desire to increase my knowledge. “

Gentry said math classes at JCCC got him interested in the business world.

“Math is one of those things where rules never change, but I had to learn the rules again because I hadn’t played the game in such a long time,” he said. “Before attending JCCC, the last time I had a math class was in 1968. I found that if you don’t use it, you lose it.”

Looking back, Gentry credits Nancy Carpenter for the confidence to get an associate’s degree from JCCC, go on to get a bachelor’s degree from the University of Kansas and ultimately receive a master’s degree in education this past May from Rockhurst University.

“Nancy instilled in me a love for math,” he pointed out. “She inspired me and kept telling me I needed to be a teacher.”

Carpenter’s enthusiasm was what Gentry benefited from the most.

“Nancy had a very high enthusiasm level,” he said. “She was able to talk to me and make sense. I realized she knew a lot more than me, but she talked in a language that I understood.”

Gentry said that at a very early age his father and even his school principal told him that he wasn’t very smart.

“My principal tried to get me into auto mechanics classes, and that’s not what I wanted to do,” Gentry said. “That was the old form of teaching, and I ended up just out of high school with very little confidence. I didn’t think I was going to amount to anything. But through marriage and opportunity, I was able to prove that wrong.”

Now with a master’s degree and ready to teach high school, Gentry wants to repay what he learned at JCCC by encouraging students to never give up.

“You always learn something new every day,” he said when asked what advice he would give high school students. “Knowledge changes your whole viewpoint on life.”

Gentry said he is definitely not going to follow in his father’s and principal’s footsteps by discouraging students.

“Times have changed,” he said. “Teaching styles have changed. There are now different ways of learning for all types of learners.”