Mentor Interview

1. Why did you decide to become a teacher?

I was in high school, I remember i was searching for careers because I wanted to figure out
what schools to go to. So i was deciding between engineering because I was always good at math
and science and education. My dad was an engineer and my mom was a teacher. My mom sent
me towards engineering more, she said teachers didnt make enough money. I remember being
in college, at a fraternity party talking to people about how im an engineer but i really wanted to
be a teacher blah, blah, blah. Then we got to engineering and I made money. I bought a cell
phone phone and a laptop, pagers, back in the day, Ford f1 50. I made a good salary but it was
kinda empty and I wanted to give back and what I didnt realize is that one of the counties in
D.C. was hiring and I switched careers and by the time I was hired two weeks later I was in a
classroom. It was a big, big, lifestyle change. It was way more work than I expected and it was a
lot less pay than I was use too so i had to cut back on some stuff. I basically wanted to give back
like my old engineering job was really only helping the rich, I was making golf courses and it
wasnt really helping society. I didnt think.
2. How do you find ways to communicate with students easily?
Just by connecting with them, figuring out where theyre coming from and establishing that
relationship I think is the biggest thing. I know Diana does that Where Im From poem, i
didnt realize the importance of that when I first started teaching and the more I get into
teaching the important is is to figure out where people are from and like their background, their
relationships with teachers and go from there.
3. How did you become the director of Ideate High Academy?
How did I become Director of Ideate High? Man thats kind of a long journey, I got into
teaching and I thought it would be easy. I thought it was gonna be a nice easy gig, summers off
every year and all that stuff. Then once you get into it you can go two routes, You can either go
like well i can just go and get my paycheck and work towards retirement but thats not me, im
more competitive also like, I got into teaching to make a difference and so thats why I started
teaching and starting clubs and pushing kids to do science fair stuff when I moved out here I was
at a different school then I switched to high tech and it had the competitive spirit and I saw the

way some students react to project based learning and make improvements. Just like Omar, you
see things like that and it inspires you to do more. Then youre sitting there and you look around
and see that there arent many schools like high tech so when this opportunity came about I
jumped at it. But I had already had two master degrees in education, including one that was a
masters in school leadership and that set me up to be ready for this. But i guess the long story of
that is that I saw that there was a need for more innovated schools.
4. How did you know that teaching was for you before you became a director?
It was very tough the first couple of years, but like i don't know you get that feeling from
helping students and you see the lightbulb go on and you hear back from students who get into
college and who got scholarships and that's the kind of feeling that i like getting. Seeing that
each day is different. Challenging, it's not boring. My engineering job kind of got boring after
while. I dont know, teaching each day...i hated it because of report cards but on average I love
going to work and that's always good.
5. Where did you go to college?
I went to the University of Virginia for college. I did mechanical engineering and two years into
engineering I realized engineering wasn't for me. I had a meeting with the actual undergraduate
business degree people and they said that it would take me two years for me to do the pre
requisite so college would of been a six year program instead of four and i was like forget that
and i suced it up for engineering and my last two years of engineering school were miserable
because the classes were insanely hard and my heart wasnt into it. That was super tough.
6. What is a memorable experience from High Tech High?
I think all the exhibitions are really awesome. I loved my last exhibition and the day after we
had a big circle with all the students. My team teacher at the time Ady set it up and students
kind of came in and shared their favorite memories. I never cry and i definitely never cry in front
of students but i was in tears the whole day but it was happy tears. So yeah exhibitions and what
not.
7. What challenges have you had across your career?
Man each year there is always a different super challenging student. Those students are always
tough to break and sometimes i get on the verge of giving up on those students. Working with

Melissa Agudelo, she really opened my eyes and helped me see that you really can get through
with these students. So each year there is a different nut, you know how they say nut to crack,
there is always that difficult student. Some of the challenges also is balancing challenging upper
level students that really want that push and who would be in AP classes at traditional schools
while helping out students who, like every year there is student who walks in and i ask whats
eight plus six and they're counting on their hands. Thats a big challenge and a big range of
students and to have them all be successful. Also there is times in a career after a couple of years
you kind of get a little bit, you just kind of want to do something different and so that's tough to
reinvent yourself well not reinvent yourself but continually push yourself to improve and to have
that energy every year.
8. How do you come up with projects for your classrooms?
The projects that I do are things that I enjoy like how you guys did the comic book project, the
game boards, those sort of thing are enjoyable to me and i thought these would be things that
people would enjoy. Then i kind of fit the content from there. To me, each time we did a project
the project got slightly better each year. So i enjoy improving on that stuff. I don't think i would
succeed in a regular environment like a traditional school. They would be like alright today is
January 17, you have to be teaching this page in the book. I would be like are you kidding me.
Now I think thats crazy. Maybe my first year of teaching that might have been better for me but
like now i've got the abilities and the skill set to do better than that.
9. Do you think that project based learning is effective in a students learning?
I think project base learning is very effective in student learning. My year in England I saw the
opposite of project based learning which is kids in rows, kids in uniforms, and pure compliant
teaching. Where all the focus is on one human being. There is thirty to forty students in there
that have to all be staring at that person, not allowed to talk to each other. Such a fit into this box
style of education and I think project based learning allows kids to show their interest to be
more engaged in the curriculum, to do stuff that actually matters as opposed to solving y=3x+4
for seventy-five times.
10. Did you first come across project base learning at High Tech High?
Yeah I did. I was at the Preuss school and I really liked their mission for students to be the first
person in their family to go to college and people that were on free or reduced lunch. So i really

like the mission for that school. Then i saw kids that were just burnt out and so they were doing
like three hours of homework and cheating was kind of rampant there because there was this
competition to keep your grades up because of college. Then i saw kids who didn't give up but
they didn't have this like fire under them. They didn't really have that light to push them
forward. So then I came to project base learning and it was actually Randy, wait Randy was
around when you guys were freshman right? So he, I remember we were at a party and he was
sitting around talking about what his kids are doing. Then on a whim Mark was visiting from the
east coast and we just went to go see him on one of my days off and when we went to go see him
he kind of offered me a job on the spot and I had to go apply for it. Then i went in and i hated it.
The first six months I absolutely hated it. I didn't believe in the program, but also High Tech
High has changed since then. I think we've become more...I don't know. To me a lot of cool
projects at High Tech use to be four or five students doing the work out of twenty-five and it
looks really cool but the other twenty students in the classroom weren't really doing anything. So
working with Diana On projects was good and the professional development that Robert was
doing was instrumental and like A) For keeping me there and me developing as a project base
learner and that's something that's very different at High Tech that I se at other schools. The fact
that our professional development is the teachers working together as oppose to in England or
traditional schools you have meetings once a month or every two weeks which are people just
sitting there and listening to someone speak and not being active, at High Tech High the
meeting are very active and I think that gets people more involved and it's actually worked. Were
working on my individual projects and things in my classroom.
11. How long did it take you to come up with your projects?
By the time you guys got there I had done the game board project five or six times, comic book
project we've done four or five times. So by the time you guys got there, those projects were
really ironed out. The first time i did the gameboard project it was just a math problem. We
didn't do any electricity. This group of kids were done with their project and they ask if they
could put christmas light in them. I said sure do whatever and they did it! I was sitting there
going YES THATS AWESOME! So i completely revamped the project. That's part of why I like
project based learning, it's the fact that you have that flexibility for kids to go further. Then like
you allow students to do something new. It did take me a while, I did not when I first started, we
didn't do critiques at High Tech which is insane because now-a-days everything is about critique
and the revision process. Diana and I started to institute critique. Diana was instrumental in me

understanding critique. I basically had a teacher who had slightly more experience with it than
me. She was instrumental in showing me the importance of multiple, multiple deadlines. Just
taking a big project and breaking it down is probably the thing that helped me the most with
project based learning. Also reevaluating what is ninth grade level work. I came to High Tech
thinking, oh its High Tech High, you see all these great projects. I came in, we were doing SAT
math prep. Thats the first thing we started working with. I had no idea that there would be kids
walking through the door, counting 8+6 on their hands. I thought High Tech High would be the
cream of the crop, but in reality its a school of average kids and makes them the cream of the
crop. It all comes back to building a connection with the students and figure out ways to get
them motivated. That comes from having projects that im excited about and if im excited about
it usually that excitement gets the students excited.
12. The connections that you know students tend to make with teachers, how do you think
that will help you as director?
I think the biggest thing is now that im like in a leadership position now i got to like make sure
my teachers by into that, you know what i'm saying? Part of my deeper understanding of this
was taking that year away from teaching and working with schools in England and seeing what
schools could be. All the professional development that helped me develop as a teacher, i'm
designing that program to help our teachers improve. So having that experience at High Tech
working with Melissa really closely to help some of those at risk students helps me. Working
with Diana to design projects for humanities helps me because i'm not a humanities teacher.
Working with Robert and seeing the way he led meetings and the way he would develop teachers
helped me a ton. So it's kind of a mix of, I was forced to closely work with a bunch of people and
then i got a lot of theoretical background from the High Tech High Grad School. ...going to those
workshops and teaching them how to do critique and teaching them how to do this stuff. When
you have to teach it to someone else you really need to know what the heck you're talking about.
When i gave my first workshop on critique i was fine but now i can make a thirty minute critique
sheet for the kids in like four minutes.