USF ADJUNCT STAFF

My name is Brent Johnston, and I have been teaching public high school driver education for over four (4) decades. I have a long history being around Driver Education as my dad was a DE instructor at York High School for many years, and to complete my family’s involvement with DE in Illinois, my daughter Christie who teaches at OPRF is also a certified and endorsed DE instructor. I suspect that I might be in a very select few families of educators that can say that they have 3 generations of DE instructors in their family.

I started my teaching career in 1975 when I was hired by Hinsdale Central High School in Hinsdale, Illinois where I taught for 34 years. I spent the last 20 years of my career as the DE Coordinator at HC and I also coached football, basketball, girl’s track and yes, gymnastics (don’t ask). I live in Elmhurst with my wife Vicki, and we have 4 grown children, Becky, Katie, Christie and Danny. My family’s legacy without question is “teaching.” My father and mother were both teachers, both of my sisters are teachers, 2 of my nieces teach, and all 3 of my daughters are teachers. Teaching at USF will be a new challenge for me as it is my greatest hope that I can enrich your learning experience with many instructional skills that I learned when I was in the trenches teaching novice teen drivers.

Teaching DE to teen drivers has been as rewarding for me as I hope it was for my students. Teaching DE to teens at HC, like many professions, started out as just another teaching job to help pay the bills. Little did I know that teaching DE to kids would eventually lead me down a path that led me to the passion of my career. Very few teaching disciplines are afforded the ability to have an influence every single day on someone’s life for the next 60 – 70 years.