John Freshwater (born June 22, 1956) is a controversial science teacher at Mount Vernon Middle School in Mount Vernon, Ohio, USA.

Freshwater has a Bachelor's Degree in Education from Ohio University and an Associate's Degree in Recreation & Wild Life from Hocking College. He is married and has three children.

The local school board voted to dismiss Freshwater in June 2008 after an investigation concluded Freshwater preached his view of Christian beliefs about how the world began, falsely claimed evolution is discredited and didn't teach the required science curriculum. Furthermore, he was previously told to stop teaching creationism and intelligent design, but he continued to do so. In addition, the school board released a report showing that Freshwater branded a Christian cross into one student's arm and several teachers complained for eleven years about Freshwater's incorrect teaching of evolution. Two of the parents of the children branded filed a lawsuit against Freshwater and the school district. Shortly after, he was also accused of shocking a special-needs student in the back after telling him to pick up a test tube, though Freshwater said he might have touched the student inadvertently as the boy walked past him. He used material from Answers in Genesis, Jonathan Wells' discredited Icons of Evolution and Kent Hovind to doubt evolution, as well as giving an extra-credit assignment for students to see the pro-intelligent design movie Expelled:No Intelligence Allowed. According to CNN, "The report also cites evidence that Mr. Freshwater told his students that 'science is wrong because the Bible states that homosexuality is a sin and so anyone who is gay chooses to be gay and is therefore a sinner'."