Beloved Dixon High School teacher and community member, Mr. Shawn Tutt, died in a car accident on Tuesday, March 31, 2020. He was 58. Shawn was an amazing husband, father, son, brother, teacher, and friend. He is survived by his wife of 35 years, his five children, two sons-in-law, and four grandchildren. He is also survived by his elderly parents, and two brothers and their families.
Tutt grew up in Glendale CA, but spent every summer of his youth in Dixon, CA visiting his paternal grandparents, Alice and Rilford Tutt, long-time Dixon residents. His father grew up in Dixon and graduated from Dixon High School in 1950. Shawn spent many happy days both in Dixon, and on the family orchards in the Capay area of Yolo County where his ancestor, William Gordon, is recorded as the first white settler in Yolo County. Gordon was awarded a land grant from the Mexican government and began farming the area in 1842. Shawn was very proud of the fact that he was a fifth generation “native” Californian, as California would not actually become a state until 1850. His extended family, to this day, continues to live in the Capay area, and his own family name is honored by the street sign denoting – “Tutt Street” – located in Madison, CA.
Tutt’s love for his grandparents drew the young couple to Dixon to care for them in their elder years. Tutt threw his whole heart into the Dixon community when he moved to town with his wife in 1984. In those early years, after dating for 3 years and newly married at age 22, Shawn worked for First Northern Bank of Dixon, at the Davis branch. Having attempted a few times to go to college in the years after his high school graduation, it wasn’t until he was married and began his family that he was finally ready to seriously commit to getting his Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration. Upon graduation, he worked as a financial planner for Prudential out of the Woodland office for a number of years. As his family grew in size, he realized that working 16-hour days was unsustainable if he ever wanted to be truly involved in his family life. So, in 1995, he and his wife choose to go back to night school to earn teaching credentials, with the plan to teach in the very same town where their children went to school, so they could always be involved with, and readily available to them, as they grew up. Tutt accompanied many of his children’s classes on field trips over the years, and those are amongst some of the most treasured memories his children have of him.
Tutt began substitute teaching in the Dixon Unified School District (DUSD) in 1996, and learned a great deal from his dedicated colleagues throughout all K-12 grade levels. He would often comment on how incredibly dedicated each teacher he subbed for was to their students. He learned early on during that year, that in order to be the most effective teacher possible, he would need to get to know each child as an individual, and treat them as such. From that time on, he lived each of his teaching days with that personal goal in mind and in practice. He also showed respect for every single individual that he ever met, regardless of the behaviors they displayed, or their life circumstances.
Upon permanent hire with DUSD in 1997, Tutt began teaching math, and keyboarding on old Apple IIe’s, an early generation of personal computers. As a volunteer during the previous year for Net Day ’96, he helped physically pull the cabling that would allow the old Dixon High School to become wired for the Internet. Once the Iinternet was established, Tutt would go on to be the sole Keyboarding/Computer Technology teacher in the district, teaching every freshman student in the district each year for over 10 straight years. Upon moving to the new Dixon High School, Tutt earned an additional credential in Social Studies, and began teaching history classes in addition to Computer Tech. Over the course of his career he taught a wide-range of classes, including: World History, Civics, Economics, Consumer Math, Diversified Occupations/Work Experience, Adult School computer and social science classes, and Secondary Special Education classes. Tutt also spent each summer for almost 20 years working with Migrant students and other credit deficient students teaching summer school classes. He was well-known as the after-school ‘credit recovery’ teacher for over 10 years, ensuring that DUSD students had the chance to make up courses to ensure that they would graduate on-time from high school.
During his non-teaching hours, Tutt and his young family were also involved in the Dixon United Methodist Church, volunteering during Vacation Bible School which was held at the Glide Ranch for several years. Tutt also coached a wide variety of youth sports including Dixon Youth Football (while three of his daughters were also cheerleaders for the same organization during that time), Dixon Youth Basketball, Dixon Girls’ Softball, and Dixon Little League. In addition, he was also the coach of CA Jacob’s Junior High Girls’ Softball team and Dixon High School’s JV Baseball team each for a season. Tutt also established the Dixon High School Chapter of Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) and was the advisor, alongside his wife, from Fall of 2004 through Spring of 2008. He built long-lasting relationships with the members of this club as they spent a great deal of time preparing for business competitions against other CA and national FBLA chapters. He got corporate partners to offer fundraising opportunities, while he personally performed a great number of fundraising activities alongside the members, to help members offset many costs associated with these events. He also established annual college scholarships in the club’s name given each spring through the DHS Community Scholarship Awards Night.
Tutt loved teaching and imparting life lessons to Dixon’s youth, whether in the classroom or in the community. He was able to establish strong bonds with both the typical student and the atypical student. The ones who didn’t want to be at school, saw no point in getting an education, and were barely passing their classes, were the ones who touched his heart the most. He would tell personal stories of how he was the same way in high school, sharing his own experiences overcoming early learning difficulties, but would patiently explain that life eventually had a way of sending each person a message of when it would be time to re-evaluate and make different choices. Tutt always gave students hope and encouragement that this was only a brief phase they would go through, and that they would live a long and happy life if only they would keep themselves open to future opportunities to improve themselves, in whatever manner they presented themselves.
Tutt’s latest passion project was the DUSD Super Saturday Academy, where any DUSD student who had an absence, could attend an enrichment program at school for 4.5 hours on a Saturday morning, to earn the district the ADA that they would otherwise not receive because the student was not physically at school. Originally, he was involved as a volunteer alongside his wife who would teach the TK-1st grade level class. Together, they quickly decided that this would be a perfect opportunity for his high school seniors in need of community service hours to become classroom helpers, thus earning the district dual funding, as it recaptured lost ADA for both primary and secondary students. Tutt has gone on to be a prominent face of this district program, for the past 5 years, continuing to forgo 2 Saturday mornings per month of his personal life to attend the program in order to supervise his recruited high school student volunteers. His portion of the program had become so popular with secondary students that often times he brought more high school student helpers than elementary students attending on any given Saturday morning. Tutt observed that his high school students totally invested themselves in this experience, learned to be more patient and selfless, and gained far more personal in-sight and growth from this cross-age teaching experience than they would have performing many other kinds of community service. He always emphasized to them how important it was to give back to their own community in a way that had a lasting impact, so what better way than to be a role-model and mentor to a young child, who would remember and internalize the shared positive experiences and good feelings that would result well into their future, just as they did for his high school students.
Tutt was highly present and visible in the community, constantly stopping to talk to anyone – stranger or friend. Tutt especially loved when former students and/or parents of those students would stop him to tell him about all of their accomplishments since they left high school. Most also thanked him for making high school fun, or at least tolerable, and said that he is the teacher that they remembered the most. Many of them ran into him again when their own children attended the Super Saturday Academy program. It is highly probable that Mr. Tutt directly touched the personal lives of more than 7000 Dixon students over his 23 years of teaching and community service.
Tutt became involved with the Dixon Teachers Association (DTA) from the beginning of his tenure with the district. He was the Association Vice President for years under various President’s, but he only recently became high profile in his DTA union work since 2017 when he became President himself. After observing several years of uneasy union relations with district administration under other leaders, Tutt and his leadership team were able to steer the Association into a more truly equal, partnership balance with the district. He not only personally served DTA individual members in numerous one-on-one meetings, he was a leader that began to coalesce the membership into a more pro-active, cohesive group. Tutt had innate personal and professional leadership skills that allowed him to accurately “read” people and situations, then enter negotiations, always while offering best possible solution options that protected both his membership and were positive outcomes for the school district. His last efforts concluded only four days prior to his passing, when, as lead negotiator, the district and union came to a mutual contract agreement for providing distance learning to DUSD students during this pandemic.
While Tutt was best known for his sarcasm and quick wit by his colleagues and students, he was even more well-known for the pride and joy that he felt for his wife and children, telling everyone that he met about the positive people they had become, and their personal accomplishments in their chosen fields. He would speak with great reverence about their post-high school educational accomplishments – collectively having earned a combination of 10 Baccalaureate and post-graduate degrees from a variety of different prestigious universities. He proudly signified their accomplishments by displaying banners from each of their universities on the walls of his classroom. He would use them as conversation starters with his students, not for the purpose of bragging, but to let his students know that his children attended the same Dixon public schools as they are currently attending. He was proud of the work the Dixon school teachers and district did to provide excellent learning opportunities, and over the years informed students sitting in his classrooms that individuals can achieve anything they set their minds to if they are willing to work hard towards their personal goals. In the end, though, it was his pride in the fact that each member of his family has chosen to follow in his footsteps in their personal and career lives – with a targeted focus on providing service to others.
Tutt’s family knew him as someone they could always count on to be there for them. He was the primary cook in the family, and fortunately was very good at it. As much as he loved watching The History Channel, he also spent a good deal of time watching the Food Network and constantly utilized new tips and techniques he learned for perfecting his cooking skills. He had a knack for making food taste great and not needing a recipe to replicate elaborate dishes. The family was always after him to write his own recipes down, but he had such a photographic memory that he wasn’t worried about forgetting any detail of them. He also loved Irish Whiskey and had strong opinions about multiple varieties – of course only after taste-tasting each of them!
Tutt loved animals and had a soft spot for his pets, adopting and saving so many that his children had to take some off his hands. He was a whiz with numbers and a history buff, with a special affinity for the battles in the Napoleonic Era. During family game nights, he had a tendency to state the answer – no matter which team he was on – so eventually he was required to play on both teams. His verbal skills, intelligence, reasoning, compassion, and love for cooking all live on in his children.
Tutt loved to be out in nature. His favorite vacations were boating and camping with his family. He was looking forward to eventual retirement with his wife in a few years, predicting he would have lots of time to go fishing in his free time, when he would not be working on his Idaho farm that he had acquired just three short years ago. His passion for college football (really just only one college football team) was known throughout the Dixon community – if you asked most people who knew him, they would remember him in his glasses, USC hat and USC bomber jacket.
In Mr. Tutt’s honor his family has set up the Shawn Tutt Memorial Fund at First Northern Bank in Dixon. Our hope is to use these donations to provide scholarship funds to be awarded each spring at the DHS Community Scholarship Awards Night to a graduating senior from Dixon High School who meets scholastic criteria, and includes a specific emphasis on what impact volunteering for local, meaningful community service activities meant to their personal development. Donations are now being accepted.