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STORY CITY, Iowa — If you ask Roland-Story High School students who their favorite teacher is, many of them will give you the same answer: Mike Bowman.

The social studies teacher is known for his storytelling rather than a strict syllabus but gives students the same expectations every semester.

“I’m not gonna give you points so you can score good on a test,” senior student Lucas Wuebker recalls Mr. Bowman saying. “I’m going to teach you this information so you can be a valuable member of society.”

It’s a style his students appreciate and admire.

“I mean when he teaches, he talks about his wife all the time, he talks about his son, he talks about relatives of his. He storytells,” junior student Rylee Wolff said. “He worked at a prison for five years, so he tells us stories all the time. So, you can’t describe Mr. Bowman as a teacher, as a person without being in his classroom setting.”

But the classroom isn’t where Mr. Bowman expected to be.

“I never planned on going to college. I thought as a kid it was for another class of people and my family were manual laborers,” Bowman said. “But I graduated, and my life has been awesome.”

After 24 years at Roland-Story, he’s thankful to have found passion in his profession.

“I say all the time, I can’t believe I get paid. My wife and I never refer to this as work, we go to school,” Bowman said. “And so I haven’t worked since I left the prison. I’ve been retired since 1991.”

And his students are thankful for him. 

“Every student should get to have Mr. Bowman,” Wuebker said. “They’re missing out if they don’t.”

“He doesn’t do this for the income or for the purpose of saying he’s a teacher,” Wolff said. “In this day and age, he does it for the students and I admire that in him a lot.”

It’s why more than 70 students, current and former, wrote letters to nominate Mr. Bowman for the Golden Apple.

“I’ve been doing it a long time. It’s coming to an end for me as well,” Bowman said when he accepted the award, “and I love it. I love every day I come here.”

Mr. Bowman’s days are limited at Roland-Story. He’s retiring next May, but his impact will be felt forever.

“There’s a quote that our superintendent handed out about seven or eight years ago and it said “how do you want to be remembered?” Bowman said. “It’s that simple. I want to be remembered for more positives than negatives. It’s that simple. I want to leave a positive vibe behind.”

Before coming to Roland-Story, Mr. Bowman taught at Colo-NESCO. In addition to teaching, he also coached football for a time.

Check out some of the other Golden Apple Award winners here.