Driving instructor Rich LaTart is something of a celebrity among Kane County’s student drivers

Educators of all kinds dedicate their lives to teaching and fostering the next generation, but few teachers put their lives in their students’ hands the way driving instructors such as Rich LaTart do on a regular basis.

LaTart teaches driver’s education at Top Driver Driving School in Geneva and has been helping Kane County students of all ages get licensed for 14 years.

Although he loves his job, LaTart said being a driving instructor isn’t a career for the faint of heart.

“It’s definitely not a job for everybody,” LaTart said. “I think you’ve gotta be a little bit crazy to consider doing this full time.”

LaTart said the biggest and most obvious difference between teaching traditional classroom students and driver’s education is the sense of danger.

“There’s a 0% chance of flying off the road due to a mistake in the classroom,” LaTart said.

Driver’s education classes require lessons in both a classroom setting and behind the wheel. While less adrenaline flows during classroom sessions, LaTart appreciates the duality of teaching in both settings.

LaTart said the key to being a driving instructor is finding a balance between rock star and Zen master. In the classroom, you have to bring enough energy to keep students focused and engaged. In the car, you have to be a rock to keep them calm, he said.

Top Driver is a private driving school that accepts students from multiple school districts in Kane County.

Liz Rogal is the regional manager for four Top Driver locations: Geneva, Oswego, Bartlett and Carol Stream. She has known LaTart for eight years. He was teaching at the driving school when she started.

Rogal described LaTart as passionate, theatrical, dramatic and emphatic with his lessons, which she said keeps students engaged like no other instructor. She said LaTart brings a unique energy to the classroom and there is a visible difference in the students’ engagement when he isn’t there.

“He is one of a kind,” Rogal said. “It really keeps the kids intrigued.”

Rogal said LaTart truly is a fixture in the community, having taught hundreds of Kane County drivers over the past decade, and he’s become somewhat of a celebrity among Kane County high school students.

Rogal said students love LaTart’s lessons both in the classroom and on the road. She said he has a knack for relating to students, is always joking around and likes to use their lingo.

“He keeps a lasting impression on students,” Rogal said. “He really does impact the community. ... They’re lucky to have somebody that’s engaged.”

LaTart was born and raised in Connecticut and spent a short time in China before his family moved to Kane County in 1988, when he was in second grade.

LaTart attended District 303 schools, including Wild Rose Elementary and Haines Middle School. He graduated from St. Charles High School in 1999 and went on to study at Illinois State University and Elgin Community College.

After college, LaTart held several jobs in Kane County, from bartender to insurance salesman. He said that although public speaking always had been one of his strengths, he never considered teaching.

In 2011, he was selling insurance in an office next door to a driving school and was asked to give a presentation to students about how car insurance works.

LaTart said he knew at the end of that first lesson, which received a standing ovation from the students, that he wanted to teach. The owner of the school asked him to be an instructor on the spot and he accepted.

“If that had never happened, I would absolutely not be teaching today,” LaTart said. “I didn’t have any kind of interest in it at all until I was pulled into it. ... It became pretty clear that it was something I could do that I just truly enjoy.”

LaTart said one thing that sets driver’s education apart from traditional school subjects is that everything they learn in his class is a practical life skill that most students will use for the rest of their lives.

LaTart said the rise of technology such as social media and ride-sharing services, however, has posed a new challenge for driver’s education teachers – a lack of motivation to get licensed among the current generation of teenagers.

“There’s far less motivation for kids to get their driver’s licenses in 2025 than there was in 1996,” LaTart said. “This is a generation that has grown up with apps on their phone where they can just hit a button and get where they need to go.”

Unlike K-12 classroom teachers, LaTart works with a wide age range of students. Although he said teenagers tend to think they’re invincible, he doesn’t like to use age as a metric for responsibility.

After 14 years of teaching, LaTart sees former students all around town and said it isn’t unusual for them to pull up next to him on the road and say “Hi” or stop him in public to catch up.

“It’s rewarding to see former students a decade later and hear lessons that I shared with them when they were kids that they still think about,” LaTart said.

Of the former students he has heard from, LaTart said two are ambulance drivers and one is an amateur race car driver.