Catholic teacher receives Huntsman Award for Excellence in Education

Intermountain Catholic

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Jody Duffy Brings

SALT LAKE CITY — Jody Duffy Brings was one of 11 Utah educators to receive the 2013 Huntsman Award for Excellence in Education and also was awarded $10,000.

Brings, a member of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish, is a theater and language arts teacher at Bryant Middle School in Salt Lake City, where she has been for five years.

"Jody has a passion about teaching," said Frances Battle, Bryant Middle School principal. "The kids absolutely love her. She makes her classroom come alive and it doesn’t matter whether she is teaching theater, history, language arts, drama or even grammar; you can walk into Jody’s classroom and her students are on task, attentive and taking in what she has to offer. Overall her students are quite successful."

Brings teaches drama, seventh-grade language arts and the Extended Learning Program for gifted and talented students.

"Jody is very involved in the activities we have at the school," said Battle. "If we have a talent show or multi-cultural extravaganza, she is among the staff members who volunteer their time, is responsible for the school plays, and assists greatly with our school musicals. For the past two years she has assisted with speakers for our eighth-grade promotion as the students go on to high school. She is a very caring person, and was recommended for the award by our school’s community council and the chairperson’s son, whom she continues to mentor. Getting this award just says a lot about her as an educator, and I am just pleased to work with her."

Brings was born and raised in Salt Lake City and attended J.E. Cosgriff Memorial School until the seventh grade, when her family moved to Texas and she attended Catholic schools there. She received a degree in theater with a minor in English from the University of Dallas.

"I was going to be a famous actress, but that didn’t work out," Brings said. "So I did voice-overs for commercials and came back to Salt Lake and decided to get a teaching certificate. There was an opening at Judge Memorial [Catholic High School] and my father bet me $5 I would get the job if I applied."

Brings was the drama teacher there from 1986 to 1991, then left teaching to start a family.

In 1999, Brings taught seventh- and eighth-grade language arts at Saint Olaf School and then sixth grade at Kearns-Saint Ann School before "taking a leap of faith to move into the public school system," she said. "It was really good for me. I think both the parochial and public school systems are great, but I was curious to see what opportunities and differences there were and I also wanted to become endorsed in English as a Second Language and the Extended Learning Program at the time."

Teaching for Brings has been a positive experience and "teaching in the public school system allows me to teach such a diverse background of students," she said. "Everybody gets to come, from refugee kids to kids with head coverings and resource kids, and I love that."

Brings chose her career because her mother was a teacher, she said. "My parents, Owen and Mary Duffy, have been so influential in my life and truly believed in education. After we finished dinner, the table was cleared and the books came out and we did our homework.

"My mother taught me that it is important to listen to the kids; they are wells of information," said Brings. "I remember the words from a song from the ‘King and I,’ ‘if you become a teacher, it’s by your students you will be taught.’"