WINTER SPRINGS, Fla. — A Seminole County A+ Teacher with a green thumb goes all out to challenge and help his students grow and learn. 

“This school year feels so much better than last year because you can feel the magic again,” Dr. Sean Loomis says.

Loomis is overjoyed that in-person learning is back at Winter Springs High School where he teaches theory of knowledge which is part of the International Baccalaureate or I.B. program.

It is meant to challenge students. Loomis shared a mix of images with Spectrum News 13, taken years before the pandemic and others more recently.  

“In the science unit, which I’m covering with my seniors right now, we don’t talk about what is science and what is not science but what is society’s relationship to science,” he reveals.

He did not initially choose education as a career.

He was digging in getting his hands dirty in a different line of work. Loomis explains that he worked at an Oviedo nursery, saying “It was my first job.”

One that helped him pay for college and taught him the importance of having a good work ethic. Knowledge was the key.

Loomis shares, “I was a state-certified horticulturist so people would come to me and I would help them plan their landscapes by teaching them the different plants that were available that worked in different parts of their yard.”

Loomis was bitten by the teaching bug though right after earning his undergraduate degree while tutoring students.

“There’s something infectious about being able to do that for other people. I can explain math and geometry to them — to students who really struggled with it in high school,” he says.

He has been in the classroom ever since. He adds, “There’s a magic in being able to open up the world to other people so that they can truly understand what’s going on around them."