Dave Shumway Outstanding Teaching Award 2021

Dave Shumway was a law student at the University of Iowa. After graduation, he returned to Algona to work at his father’s law firm. Shumway was a reliable investor and volunteered his expertise to the Algona Community School Foundation, guiding its investments with a lot of success. In 2016, Shumway passed away and his sister, Sandra Howe, donated $50,000 to the Algona Community School Foundation in honor of Shumway’s dedication to education. The Dave Shumway Outstanding Teaching Award was created to benefit the outstanding teachers of Algona Community School District’s high school. 

Bill Fjetland was the recipient of this year’s award. Fjetland has accomplished many things throughout his career in education. While he retired 10 years ago, he truly left his mark on the Algona Community School District. He excelled in whatever task he took on.

Fjetland was an outstanding high school wrestler. He then moved on to wrestle at Iowa State University. During his time there, the team won the National championship three of the four years he attended. After college, Fjetland taught in Nebraska before he came to Algona in 1974.

Before Fjetland started at AHS, the PE department consisted of throwing a ball and blowing a whistle. Fjetland introduced many more activities to the PE program. 

One of Fjeltland’s skills was bringing in outside help with a deeper knowledge base in the content he was teaching. The National Guard was a big help, teaching cross country skiing, repelling, and obstacle course work. Chinese graduate students from UNI came to introduce Tai Chi to students.

Fjetland’s most ambitious project was teaching outdoor recreation. Since students were required to take PE, Fjetland made it so that instead of taking a gym class throughout the semester, students could go on a weeklong summer program, either canoeing or biking, in exchange for a semester of PE. Not only did they get physical activity in with the physical demands of the trip, but they also had to set up camp, plan, and prepare food. This opened people’s schedules so they could take college preparatory classes during the school year.

One of Fjetland’s most remarkable impacts on AHS is the creation of Superstars. This event pits students from each grade against each other in numerous competitive events. Since its creation, Superstars has been many AHS students’ favorite memories of high school.

Fjetland was also an outstanding coach at AHS. His wrestling team won the championship in 1980, and his volleyball team competed at State twice. While Fjetland had a history in wrestling, volleyball was relatively new to the Conference and completely new to Fjetland when he took over.  In order to be successful, he studied the sport, attended summer clinics in Colorado Springs, and immersed himself in the sport until he was an expert. He finished with a dual meet record of 65-19 in wrestling, and a game record of 1,187-400 in volleyball. 

Later in his educational career, Fjetland was the Algona High School principal. He excelled greatly at this as well. Fjeltand’s outstanding career was recognized in several ways. Not only was he influential to students, athletes, and teachers, he was also awarded for his skills.  He received the AHS Class of 1979 Outstanding Teacher Award in 2006. He was asked to speak at clinics around the country. He was named the Iowa Secondary Physical Education Teacher of the Year in 1998, and his program received the Iowa Exemplary Education Award.

As part of the recognition of the Dave Shumway Outstanding Teaching Award, Fjetland received $2,500. Algona High School was lucky to have Fjetland in the district.