Meet Joel Kunz—a Golden Apple Teacher of the Year finalist

Joel Kunz [Marion County Public Schools]

A history teacher from Dunnellon Middle School is one of six finalists for this year’s Golden Apple Teacher of the Year Award.

Joel Kunz teaches in grades six through eight. He has been teaching in Marion County Public Schools since the beginning of his teaching career 14 years ago.

This potential teacher of the year has not always worked in education; he spent 25 years in the equine industry, which brought him to Ocala. Due to health issues, he made the switch to teaching and discovered his life’s passion.

He was surprised with his Golden Apple nomination on Dec. 11 by Superintendent Diane Gullett, with Kunz’ wife, Laura, and many others in tow. The Teacher of the Year honor is awarded by the Public Education Foundation of Marion County, and the winner will be announced at the Golden Apple Gala on Feb. 1, 2025, at 7 p.m. at the Reilly Arts Center in Ocala.

Marion County’s 2025 Golden Apple Teacher of the Year will win an Acura Integra, with a three-year pre-paid lease from the Jenkins Auto Group. The gala will also recognize the 2025 School Related Employee of the Year and Rookie Teacher of the Year.

The caravan to present Kunz with his nomination arrived during a class period with his eighth grade students, who he said he feels particularly fond of—as two years prior he suffered from a major health episode that changed his life.

“When they were sixth graders, over Thanksgiving break, I actually died, and I was airlifted up to (UF Health) Shands (Hospital),” Kunz said. “I ended up having a heart transplant 76 days later, and my sixth graders that were part of that group of students I had at the time.”

Kunz said he was able to return to the classroom to continue teaching his students for the last five weeks of school.

“For them to see that I lived through all this and here I am, that was pretty important,” Kunz said. “They experienced that whole thing with me, so this is kind of a special group because of that.”

Because he teaches history to all grades at Dunnellon Middle School, Kunz gets the unique opportunity to follow his students through multiple grades and over many different areas of history.

Kunz works in partnership with the school’s language arts program, to strengthen students’ skills across both areas of study.

“I take the papers that they’ve written in my class and then hand them to the language arts teacher. Now, they have the opportunity to take their work and polish it,” Kunz said. “They fix the grammar, fix the structure, and then at the end of this whole process we’ve got a finished paper.”

Kunz began teaching after earning his bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida. While his path to teaching wasn’t traditional, he said his mother was a teacher and he always held that possibility in his mind.

“I told a seventh grade guidance counselor that I wanted to be a teacher someday, and he laughed at me and told me to go get a job somewhere else,” Kunz joked. “I wish he could see me now.”