Government is a required class if students want to graduate. Kempsville High School started its 2017-2018 school year with new students and school teachers.

One of the new teachers is Wes Cook, a government teacher. He has 11 years of teaching experience in subjects like World History I, VA US History, AP Comparative Government and U.S. Government.

Cook is currently married and has a 3-year-old daughter.

Teachers have different styles of teaching. “I prefer traditional styles of teaching because of the way I was taught,” Cook said.

He didn’t plan to be a teacher until his freshman year of college.

Before coming to Kempsville, he was a teacher at Landstown High School. During his years teaching there, something interesting happened: the teachers got called down to the auditorium for a special meeting.

Teachers were informed that, in a week, they would have protesters outside of the school, between 7:00 and 7:15.

“It was going to be 6 people, they already had a permit and some signs with derogatory terms,” Cook said.

The teachers had to inform all students about them and tell students that they should avoid protestors because some people believe the protestors looked for lawsuits and for people to assault them.

“They were protesting outside of our school because a year or two years before that, we had a group of people, in particular, one student who wanted to blow up the school and had bomb material at his house,” Cook said.

The protesters got a word of that, and their message was that they wished it happened.

His memories are fuzzy, but as he remembers it was 2009-2010.

One of the wrestlers at the time got involved and held up some signs. The student got in trouble because of his sign, and students were informed specifically to not get involved and got a discipline referral for it.

As a government teacher, Cook believes in discussing current events. He recommends PBS for educational shows. “I prefer FrontLine for current events since they are not biased,” Cook said.

Cook is a teacher who likes his job and his favorite part of teaching is to help kids to learn.