Building The Next Generation Of Wildland Firefighters With Bryan Kerns. Bryan’s work in bringing wildfire into the classroom earned him the 2025 Tennessee teacher of the year.

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The question on the minds of many agency leaders and supervisors is how to build and train the new generation of wildland firefighters. Well, that’s just what firefighter and teacher Bryan Kerns is doing with his wildfire program, earning him the 2025 Tennessee teacher of the year.

Bryan Kerns is the Fire Science teacher at Dobyns-Bennett High School in Kingsport, TN. Bryan has been in wildland fire since 2003 and brought his wildland fire experience into the classroom in 2019. What started as an after school club known as The Pulaski Club in 2019 has now grown into a full progression of Fire Science courses, complete with one of the nation's, if not the only, high school Prescribed Burn Team. Bryan has over 30 young men and women from his program now working in wildfire and EMS.

Bryan will travel to D.C. soon to discuss expanding this program nationwide.

Contact: bkerns@k12k.com

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