Chris Monsour speaks to a class of Brookfield High School students during his first official visit as Ohio Teacher of the Year.
Chris Monsour has done some pretty cool things. He’s slid into a shark cage to observe great white sharks off the coast of South Africa, watched leatherback turtles lay their eggs on the beach in Trinidad and studied meditation at a Buddhist monastery in Thailand.
All this from a guy who had little parental support and was not a popular kid in school. He skated through school with a B average and spent a lot of time serving punishments for petty offenses, such as chronically chewing gum in class. Some classes he paid little attention in.
“I raised every red flag,” he said of the risk factors that indicate a student is struggling.
In his first official visit as Ohio’s Teacher of the Year, Monsour stressed to Brookfield High School students that he’s no different from them.
“I’m just a kid from Brookfield, like you guys,” he told students on Oct. 9.
A kid who took advantage of the opportunities placed before him and learned that hard work can take you to some pretty cool places.
Monsour, a 1995 Brookfield grad, said he had little support or encouragement at home and, after his mom died when he was a sophomore, was essentially left on his own. School became his “safe haven” because of the support of his teachers, and the outside world became his refuge, particularly the woods around his grandparents’ home in Stoneboro, Pa.
His interest in the outside world led him to study biology at Heidelberg University in Tiffin, and a chance encounter with the superintendent of Tiffin schools gave him a shot as a substitute science teacher. Teaching biology and other sciences became his full-time career.
“Your situation doesn’t define you,” Monsour said. “If you look at how I grew up, I should not be here. I worked through it and put a lot of hard work in and now I get to travel.”
With a renewed societal interest in science, “There’s a lot of money for science teaching,” he said of how he gets to travel. “I’m part of an organization called Earth Expeditions out of Miami University. They send teachers to make them better teachers.”
To become a better teacher, he spent a month on a boat in Hawaii catching sharks, studied hornbills in Thailand, observed cheetahs in Namibia, volunteered at an HIV-AIDS clinic in Capetown, South Africa, snorkled with hammerhead sharks in the Galapagos Islands, howled with wolves in Yellowstone and cruised the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.
When he’s on these trips, it helps that he loves analyzing data.
“I like looking at numbers,” said Monsour, who got a master’s degree from Montana State.
A teacher for 27 years, he appreciates the teachers he had who took an interest in him and looked out for him when they knew he was hurting. He took from them the compassion they showed him and their enthusiasm for the subjects they were teaching, even when he wasn’t paying attention. Like his teachers fought for him, he fights for his students.
“Some people describe me as a dog with a bone,” he said. “I don’t let go.”
Monsour said he hopes Brookfield students will realize, “There’s life beyond (Route) 82.”
“When you get a chance, try to go away for a bit,” Monsour told the students. “It does make you appreciate where you came from.”
Monsour appreciates where he came from.
“If I didn’t have the experiences I had here in Brookfield, I wouldn’t be where I am today,” he said.
Monsour has been nominated for national Teacher of the Year. An announcement should be made in January, he said.
