Golden Apple: Alex Downing

BROWN COUNTY – Each year, the Greater Green Bay Chamber recognizes and honors educators who inspire, lead and innovate in Greater Green Bay classrooms through the Golden Apple Awards.

The Golden Apple Awards honor those shaping student success and our region’s future through excellence in education.

Eight award recipients will be recognized April 22 at the Golden Apple Awards event, and will also be featured in stories in the Press Times each week leading up to the event.

This week, get to know Golden Apple Award recipient Alex Downing.

Alex Downing, currently a teacher at Red Smith School, grew up in the Chicago suburbs and graduated from Huntley High School in Illinois, before going to study at St. Norbert College.

After graduating in 2022, he started his teaching career at Red Smith School.
Beyond teaching, Downing said he has also “taken on various roles, including Social Studies Department Chair, assistant football coach, assistant track coach, co-advisor for esports, as well as being a member of the continuous school improvement team.”

There have been two main experiences that have shaped Downing as a teacher.
First was “volunteering at the Algonquin Public Library as a high schooler,” he said. “My mom had signed me up (against my will) to help elementary kids who were struggling readers gain more confidence and read with me. While I did it begrudgingly at first, I ultimately found it to be very rewarding, helping kids improve their reading and confidence and seeing them grow in their abilities from summer to summer.”

The other was his high school history classes, which Downing stated gave him “the ability to take classes that interested [him] for the first time” and shaped his current teaching style. Downing’s parents were also impactful in his success. “Growing up, I was hard-headed and didn’t quite appreciate the ethics of hard work, integrity and independence that they taught me. Their never-ending perseverance paid off in the end — without these values and their continued support to this day, I would not be where I am now,” he said.

This support and experience allowed him to make his classroom unique, especially through the level of student engagement.

“On any given day you could walk into my classroom and see it in action — whether my students are attempting to throat-sing as we learn about medieval Mongolian cultural practices, designing their own cultural fusion dishes after learning about the history of sushi in Japan or simulating a merchant travelling Europe during the outbreak of the black death — I do my best to have students learn skills, while also having them do engaging activities they have never done before in a class,” said Downing, hoping that what “my students take away from their time in my classroom is a deeper appreciation for the past events that have shaped our ever-changing world today.”

Downing’s parting advice to new teachers is that “it is ok to make mistakes. Like anything else in life, it takes time to be good at something. Know that, and work to improve each and every day.”