In a school with an average of over 500 people per grade and countless wonderful faculty and staff members, it is hard to learn about every teacher. However, with the Vestavia Hills Pillar articles revolving around teacher highlights, anyone has the opportunity to learn more about these amazing members of our Vestavia Hills community. One such teacher has been an essential member of this community, raising one of our strongest academic teams to a high degree of excellence, teaching several math classes, and inspiring his students.
Mr. Conoly has been a teacher at Vestavia Hills High School for 10 years. With his background at Auburn earning an undergraduate degree in math education with a minor in business, he went on to earn his graduate degree at the University of Alabama in Birmingham while teaching math classes at night.
Working as a teacher at Vestavia Hills High School was his first career out of graduate school where he was hired as a math teacher as well as a coach for the speech debate team.
While he may not have known much about speech and debate before getting this job offer, Mr. Conoly got to work very quickly, learning the basics of debate and eventually establishing Vestavia Hills High School as a prominent debate team.
Mr. Conoly is certified to teach math and theater and currently teaches pre-calculus.
His list includes being a coach to numerous state champion debate teams, most recently earning a three-peat overall in speech and debate, this past year, winning the overall trophy for speech, debate, Congress, and overall best team at the Alabama state competition.
Conoly is also a recipient of the NFH Outstanding Debate, Theater, and Academic Educator Award.
Some of his goals for the future include continuing to win speech and debate tournaments and growing as a team. He will also be receiving another star from the National Speech and Debate Association (NSDA) at this year’s national tournament.
Outside of his professional life, Mr. Conoly has asserted himself as a force to be reckoned with when it comes to fantasy football, as he currently has the lead in his league. He speaks some Korean and loves to learn about other cultures. At a striking 6’4” Mr. Conoly is not a frequent basketball player but will be competing as a part of the faculty team in the student-faculty basketball game on Wednesday, October 9th! Another fun fact about Mr. Conoly is that he stood atop the line of the equator while he was in Ecuador. Additionally, he is an avid player of many board games and card games, especially fish, a card game commonly enjoyed by the speech and debate team during the off-season.
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