understanding. Students are trying to make meaning, and history helps them do that.” Such passion for inspiring curiosity was exactly what Ross experienced as a CSB student in the 1990s. In fact, Ross plays a James Burke video series, “Connections” (1979) for his students every year, material that former CSB history teacher Mr. Korn used to play when Ross was a student. “He very accidentally got me interested in history,” Ross recalls. “I was blown away by the video: It traced the history of Mesopotamia through a series of inventions and accidents that led up to the invention of atomic weaponry. That lodged in the back of my brain.” Ironically, English was his favorite class at the time, and teacher Anne Roberts was one of a handful of faculty members who had a tremendous impact on Ross. “She was one of those people who would ask the question and not be afraid of the silence, which is something I’ve now incorporated into my own teaching,” he says. “It’s one of those things which seems obvious, but there are teachers who leave no hang time between questions. If you wait, it gives kids time to process.” Beyond academics, Ross serves as an advisor to students at Santa Catalina, a role he appreciates for the insight it allows him into his students’ lives. A self-described “C-average” student, Ross faced challenges as a young boy, but was profoundly impacted by CSB teacher Robert Kerman. “He was that person I could always look to; I felt like he was looking out for me. That made a huge difference,” he says. “Throughout my career, I’ve tried to identify those students who need someone to watch out for them. Being someone who listens, gives advice when needed, there’s something powerful when a student says, ‘you’re kind of the father I didn’t have’. That’s the whole part of teaching: You’re not just getting them to understand content or skills. You are a huge part of their development as a kid, from their moral compass to everything else.” For some CSB alums who went into teaching, like Peter Getz who attended Cathedral from 1957 to 1959, the path and plan were not quite as clear as Ross’s. A series of academic struggles that included flunking out of one of Texas’s preem- inent pre-med schools landed him a job as a teacher’s aide at his father’s parish church, St. Luke’s Episcopal, where Peter assisted six kindergarten classes—not exactly a career move on his radar. Although the paychecks were lean and he moved on to subsequent jobs in retail management, Peter eventually completed his degree at Incarnate Word College in San Antonio, Texas. “I took to teaching like a duck to water,” he recalls, making the Dean’s List and completing his courses in half the time required for the degree and teaching certifi- cation before he was hired to teach third grade at St. Luke’s, the same Episcopal school where he had first gotten the bug to teach. During that year, Reverend Christopher Jones, the school’s headmaster, who would later influence and inspire
TEACHING INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM: Peter Getz’s career has spanned decades
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