Teacher of the Year: David Zies

Sarah Muzzillo
Features Editor

Special education teacher David Zies was named Apex’s Teacher of the Year for 2012. Zies who has been teaching since 2001, began working at Apex in 2009.


Although Zies originally majored in business management at the University of Arizona, he later became a special education teacher purely by chance. “In my senior year, I decided I wanted to teach, but was too far into the program [business management] to switch,” he says.

Zies has been named Teacher of the Year.

After moving to the California Valley following graduation, Zies completed a test to be certified in middle school math, and applied to multiple teaching jobs. “I didn’t realize that one was a special education school,” he explains. “I really loved the student-to-teacher ratio, 15-1 as opposed to 40-1.”

Zies was voted teacher of the year from a pool of several other Apex educators. “I was shocked because Mr. Sands does great artwork around campus, Mr. Miller does an excellent job with the strings department, and Mr. Murphy has won so many awards with DECA; they all deserved to be Teacher of the Year. I was honored to be on the same list as them,” says Zies.

Zies’s job is gratifying in multiple ways. “One time, I had a student who had a perfect verbal scored on the SAT, but he could not figure out how kids met at a car to go off-campus for lunch,” he recalls. “I get to work on the social changes that students face, not just academics,” he says.

Currently, Zies is in graduate school at N.C. State to earn his administrative certification. “As long as I continue teaching, I would love to stay here because it’s such a rewarding place to be,” says Zeis.