Columnist, Santa
Monica Mirror
 |
| David Bryan New Roads School |
David Bryan, the Head of School at New Roads
School in Santa Monica, has spent most of his life in the classroom. In thinking about his teaching he said,
“Some of the most exciting moments I’ve had have been in the classroom. To be part of a moment when everyone is
being passionate and even ferocious about the same ideas, to help people come
together in their shared knowledge, is exciting. It’s like juggling and then seeing the pattern emerge.”
Teaching started simply as a way to get through
grad school without paying. He was
studying Law at SUNY Buffalo. Law
School tuition was high and he decided to ‘go shopping’ to see if he could get
some financial help. He got help from
The SUNY Communications Department when they accepted him as a PhD student and
paid for all his courses, including the law classes.
Bryan had always been shy and when he found out that
to get his tuition paid he would be required to stand up in front of a classroom
of college students and teach he almost gave up. However he didn’t want to lose what he saw as a great
opportunity. So he gathered his
courage, went into the classroom and took roll. He hoped that would be a way into a conversation with his
students.
Seeing the name Timothy Leary on the roster
Bryan asked the student. “Are you
related?”
The student looked questioningly at Bryan. He had no idea there was a famous
Timothy Leary. Bryan was
somewhat thrown and he jokingly asked the class, “Hey, do you guys know the
Beatles?”
The class laughed. Bryan was relieved.
He was more than relieved. Bryan
said, “I liked the feeling of making the students laugh. I liked the interaction. It got me out of feeling uncomfortable.”
By the time he earned his law degree he had come
to the conclusion that he didn’t have the temperament for practicing law. So he taught, he wrote, he worked
construction jobs. Then he and
some friends went to Florida to live on a boat and work on boats.
“I lived on a 36’ Morgan sloop in south Florida
and in the Caribbean. Living on a
boat makes you pay attention.
There is always the demand of the ocean and that demand is ignored to
one’s peril. You pay
attention to the ocean and you pay attention to yourself. In fact, living on the ocean can be
self -absorbing and over time it made me realize I needed to reenter the world.
“I was in the boat and reckoning with the idea
of boat life and what’s next and the idea of teaching high school took hold of
me hard.” Bryan started to
research what he needed to do in order to teach High School.
His mother was in California and he wanted to live
near her. “I loved my
Mom. She was amazing. She could figure out anything, she
could fix the dishwasher and the washing machine. She was smart about money and investments. She loved her garden, especially her
roses and her gladiolas. She hated
housework. She and my father made
it abundantly clear to me and to my brother that they loved us.”
LA Unified gave him a substitute teacher
emergency credential. While he was
subbing at LA Unified he was also looking for a full time job.
He ran into Jack Zimmerman who had been a friend
from college days. Zimmerman was by then an educator and a therapist. He introduced Bryan to Paul Cummins,
the Founder and Director of Crossroads School in Santa Monica. Cummins hired Bryan to teach Crossroads
Middle School history, English and the mysteries classes - then an innovative
and now a widely used curriculum for teaching human development and ethics.
Part of the ongoing discussion among faculty at
Crossroads was how to make a Crossroads education available to all students who
wanted it. It was an idea Paul
Cummins acted on and he started New Roads School to do just that. Cummins formed the New Visions
Foundation to provide support for
his plan for the school and for an Educational
Village.
Cummins asked David Bryan to be the Head of
School at New Roads. It was an
assignment Bryan gladly accepted.
Bryan describes the work at New Roads as “super joyful. The kids are fabulous. They come to school because they
want to be here and that’s an essential part of a learning environment.”
New Roads is a school that is genuinely diverse
– racially, ethnically, culturally, socioeconomically. Diversity is recorded in School
demographics and statistics. Bryan
said the students and faculty have “embraced diversity. It is lived in the daily life of the
School. At New Roads students and faculty cross the invisible barriers that
seem to exist in our society even though we all know they have no basis in
fact.
“Another measure of our success as a school is
that our kids are prepared for college and our students go to colleges all over
the country. Even more
important, they are prepared to take the next steps on the path of life,” said
Bryan.
After 18 years of being the Head of School at
New Roads, Bryan is retiring. He
and his wife, the psychologist and educator Shelly Graham, are moving to the
Santa Cruz Mountains. Right now
his plan is to create some space and see what fills it up. “I’ve had an adventurous life,” he
said, “Now I’m doing what I always tell the kids to do, be open to having an new
adventure.”
