AN INDELIBLE IMPACT At the heart of 2021 Forbes Master Teacher Chair Sean Breen’s creative genius is constant reflection, revision and reimagination.
BY MEGAN PICKETT WYMAN (Thorne ’23)
PUT TOGETHER A BASEBALL DEVOTEE BOUND FOR SAN DIEGO, a kid with electromagnetic hypersensitivity headed to Amish Country, and a guy who wants to croon like old-time singers in a fogged-in bus station in Paris, Missouri, and what do you get? A tiny glimpse into the labyrinthine imagination and inimitable creativity of Sean Breen. As Cathedral’s beloved Performing Arts teacher for nearly 40 years, Breen has lent not only his countless talents to the CSB community, but also a profound definition of service and tireless dedication to students and fellow faculty. To call him a Renaissance man would be a gross understatement, let alone a cheap cliché. For at the heart of his work is the constancy of revision in the name of improvement. He is the consummate life-long learner who, as one anonymous 6th grader said, “makes it fun to be bad.” The list of fun facts about Mr. Breen is as varied as the number of instruments he can play. For years he kept a basketball in the back of his car to shoot hoops in the Tenderloin after school (and subsequently ruined his knees). He loves to travel to desolate places to gem-hunt with his wife. Before teaching, he worked as a security guard, bank teller, and played weddings in a band. When he retires, he plans to join the World Series of Poker. He skips the New York Times crossword puzzles until Fridays. He has posted videos of all the musicals he’s written over the past 38 years to YouTube. And the legend many students have heard that he once wrote and recorded a song for the San Francisco ’49ers on the cusp of Super Bowl victory and slipped past security at Candlestick Park to leave copies on every player’s windshield is true. But one fun fact that parents may not know truly embodies Breen’s subtle character and approach to teaching: Every morning, as boys trickle onto campus, Breen starts his day at the piano down in the depths of the Crypt. “I leave the door open because I want kids to hear it as they go by,” he says. The practice is just one example of his gift for igniting a love of learning beyond the classroom.
Born into a United States military household in Germany, Breen was one of eight children, often lost in the shuffle as the family moved to Greece, England, and around the Washington D.C. area. With no money for college, “unless we agreed to go to teachers’ college, since tuition was $100 and they would find you a job if you agreed to teach within five years of graduation,” he sought a degree in teaching and music, graduating in 1976. Following a short-term post as a music teacher in a rural Virginia school where he met his future wife, the lure of the big city drew Breen to New York where he taught at a private school on the Upper East Side. With the arrival of his sons, he heeded advice from a mentor who suggested that boarding schools might provide greater quality of life for a young teacher and his family. He accepted a job at The Thacher School in Ojai only to find that heat, snakes, and a complete lack of privacy were not for him. Luckily there was an opening at a boys’ school in San Francisco, and Breen joined Cathedral in 1984. He never intended to stay at Cathedral for as long as he has. With dreams of a recording studio, the plan was to stay finan- cially stable until he wrote his first hit. During this period, he composed in his precious free time late at night, wrote for public radio and commercials, and poured savings into travel to Los Angeles to record demos. But as creative souls know rejection all too well, nothing hit. “The closest I came to fame was the song I wrote for the San Francisco ’49ers when they were going for their third consecutive championship,” he recalls.
12 | CATHEDRAL SCHOOL FOR BOYS
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