Robert Efken is a 20 year veteran of local and community theater in the St. Louis area. Some of his favorite past roles include Thenardier in Les Miserables, Trekkie Monster in Avenue Q, Gaston in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella’s Prince, the Wolf, and the Narrator in Into The Woods, the Scarecrow and the Lion in The Wizard of Oz, Joe Hardy in Damn Yankees, The Pharaoh in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and Marcellus Washburn in The Music Man. He has received two Arts for Life Best Performance Awards along with six nominations for his work in St. Louis Theater. Bob had the honor to serve as the director of the Junior Broncho Productions theater company for ten years.
Bob is a national presenter, education consultant, public school educator, and life-long learner who has worked extensively with elementary, middle, and high school programs across the country as an Education Consultant with Pearson Professional Development and School Achievement Services. Bob has a high-energy, comedic, and theatrical delivery style, and has presented across the United States on the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) and the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts (CCSS). He had the honor of hosting a session on administrator coaching at the Learning Forward National Conference (formerly the National Staff Development Council). He also presented on "B(R2K) - The Bayless Way" at the CharacterPlus National Conference, and his presentation on argument and debate in the Common Core State Standards was accepted to the Association for Middle Level Education National Conference. Bob has created and delivered regional professional development on SIOP, student engagement and interaction, the Common Core Standards for ELA, vocabulary instruction and enrichment, argumentative writing, grading practices, interactive teaching techniques, and classroom teacher observations among other topics.
Robert currently serves as an English Language Arts, Remedial Reading, and Yearbook teacher at Bayless High School, a recognized Missouri and National School of Character and which has been deemed the most diverse school district per capita in the state of Missouri. His work with the students of Bayless and the SIOP model was featured in the book Beyond Core Expectations: A Schoolwide Framework for Serving the Not-So-Common Learner by Dove, Honigsfeld, and Cohan. Bob has lectured on American educational topics at the University of Missouri – St. Louis, where he taught English language teachers from Seoul, South Korea who were visiting the United States, and worked to set up co-teaching opportunities for those educators while they were in the country. Bob was the 2007 Bayless School District Teacher of the Year, is a recipient of the Emerson Electric Excellence in Teaching award, was recognized as a recipient of the Exceptional Educator’s Award from the Affton Chamber of Commerce, and has received a Promising Practice award from the Character Education Partnership/character.org.
Bob Received his Specialist in School District Administration and Masters of Arts in K-12 School Supervision and Administration from Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. He received his Bachelors of Science in Middle and Secondary English Education from Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri. Bob is happily married to his high school sweetheart and is the father of four children.