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Aaron Bagby
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Jen Bamesberger
Middle School Educator
303-440-7520, extension 109
jen@watershedschool.org
Jen moved to Colorado four years ago to join the Watershed teaching team. She earned a B.S. in Biology from Humboldt State University and is currently working toward a Masters in teaching K-12 science at the University of Northern Colorado. She has taught physical and life science in public and private schools in northern California, coordinated service projects, and facilitated technology use in the classroom. Jen joined the Exploratorium Teacher Institute in 2003.
She has guided adolescents in white water rafting and enjoys any outdoor adventure involving hiking or rivers, especially discovering new hot springs. Jen believes that kids need to emerge from school not only with a bank of facts, a clear conceptual framework, and the ability to think critically, but that they also need to be practiced in being curious and skilled in posing their own intriguing questions. Her passion as a teacher is to build students' willingness and confidence to figure things out for themselves.
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Chris Carithers
Chris grew up in Seattle and was immersed in the diverse experiences provided by the Pacific Northwest. He grew up climbing in the North Cascades, kayaking on the Snoqualmie, and sailing on Lake Washington, while concurrently nurturing a love for literature and art. After graduating with a B.A. in English Literature from Colorado College, Chris started what would turn out to be a ten year working relationship with Outward Bound. He served as a Lead Instructor, Course Director, Trainer and eventually became the Director of Safety, Training and Curriculum. Due the seasonal aspect of this work, Chris and his wife traveled during the off season to climb and explore in New Zealand, South America, Mexico and Europe. One of their highlights was holing up one winter in a remote cabin outside of Montezuma, Colorado and sewing hats to make ends meet. Chris then settled down in Boulder and earned a Master of Arts in Education from the University of Colorado at Boulder. To leverage education as a means for fighting for social justice, he taught Language Arts for four years to support Thornton’s Mapleton School District in a school reform movement. In this short period the “at-risk” population served by the Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts became the first public school in Colorado to have one hundred percent of its seniors graduate from high school and receive acceptance to a four year college.
As an educator Chris believes that, at its best, a liberal arts education provides students with rich and complex experiences that develop their ability to analyze and interpret the world. If a student can “see” the world through the eyes of a scientist, mathematician, poet, historian, or artist, then the world becomes worth knowing, and one’s experience in it more rich because of an enhanced ability to critically examine the world and construct one’s own meaning and ideas. Chris is passionate about supporting his students in becoming life-long readers, as well as creative and articulate writers.
Chris’ interests include biking, climbing, kayaking, gardening, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Cormac McCarthy and exploring the world with his two daughters, Stella and River.
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Jen Curtis
Growing up in a small town in the Berkshire Mountains of Western Massachusetts, Jen was able to cultivate a love of nature, exploration, and community involvement from a young age. After working as an art framer and jewelry maker, she moved across the country to Arizona to attend Prescott College’s education program.
During this time, Jen traveled around the Southwest, hiking its canyons, mountains, and city streets, experiencing a variety of educational models to understand best practices. After graduating with a B.A. and teaching certification, Jen stayed in Prescott to work in a public middle school teaching Language Arts.
To fulfill a love of travel, meeting new people, and learning about different cultures, Jen has explored much of the United States, Latin America, Europe, and Southeast Asia during school breaks and spent summer months working with an international community service and adventure travel program. She traveled with high school students in the rural hill tribes of Thailand and the mountainous regions of Peru with hopes of making a positive difference and broadening students’ worldview.
These experiences have shaped Jen’s educational philosophy that incorporates human development, community, and our relationship to the natural world to support growth and success in students. Through a variety of educational practices, both in and out of the classroom, Jen supports learners to find passions in life, gain skills needed for their futures, and develop awareness to the global community and its peoples.
With many of her essential components, such as mountains to hike and ski, bike paths, art, a variety of ethnic foods, a good international airport, and the perfect balance of city and wilderness, Jen is thrilled to be living in Boulder and teaching at the Watershed School.
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Debi Edy
Debi grew up in Texas and was exposed to Spanish at an early age. As long as she can remember, she has been drawn to all things foreign; language, culture, food, customs and religion. She has moved from Texas to Colorado to Oregon to California to North Carolina to California to Colorado! Along the way she earned a degree from the University of Oregon and had a son in 1990. She volunteered in her son's school and became a teacher as a result of being in the classroom and guiding students to strive for and achieve personal success. She has studied Spanish, Italian and German over the years but her passion is and always was Spanish.
In the early 1990's, she created a Pre-School through High School Spanish curriculum and has now taught Spanish 1, 2 and 3 for 15 years. She strives to teach Spanish in a way that is engaging, fun, inter-active and creates a life-long love of this language, its people and culture. She loves to read and her favorite books are about WW2, the Holocaust, the Civil War and Underground Railroad and historical fiction in Mexico, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Ireland and England.
Debi enjoy gardening, cooking and spending time with her new Colorado friends. She lives with a goofy beagle named George. Her son, who is 20 and is in his senior year at USC, visits often.
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Amir Erez
Math Educator and College Counselor
303-440-7520, extension 110
amir@watershedschool.org
Amir was born and raised in Boulder, CO and quickly grew passionate about the natural environment, and all Boulder had to offer, but also stifled by the “republics” smallness and yearning to see the world. After high school he left to study at The University of Michigan where he received his degree in Industrial and Operations Engineering and proceeded to design clean room factories for Intel in Portland, OR. After four years working in the corporate world, the confines of the cubicle and his sense of adventure took hold and he left to climb, travel and explore the world for a year.
Amir’s travels have taken him to most of the mountain ranges in the United States as well as to Thailand, Laos, Mexico, and all throughout South America. After adventuring, Amir started to transition into education. This started with a pay phone interview at 3 am from the streets of Bangkok with Outward Bound. This initiated a 6 year relationship with Outward Bound instructing and course directing mountaineering courses in Colorado and proctoring the 81 day leadership semester in the United States and Ecuador.
Amir’s growing passion for working with young people led him to Eagle Rock School in Estes Park, CO where he completed a one year teaching fellowship. At Eagle Rock, Amir designed curriculum and taught a number of innovative project based classes from building a cedar strip canoe to learn about the math and physics of floating, to climbing and hiking classes incorporating reading writing and ecology. Through the program, Amir received his Colorado Teaching License in secondary math.
Amir is passionate about an educational philosophy that includes teaching to the entire self, both academics and character and helping students discover their assets and passions. He is delighted to be working at Watershed School this year.
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Greg Guevara
Greg grew up exploring and playing in the Siskiyou Mountains and rivers of southern Oregon. Throughout high school and college, Greg took advantage of his surroundings and learned to mountaineer, kayak, rock climb and ski. While in college at the University of Oregon earning his BS in Business with a minor in Geography, Greg spent his summers instructing and guiding whitewater kayaking in both Oregon and California. Through sharing his love for the outdoors with others, he began to realize the joy of education and instruction. With encouragement and mentoring from his father, he took his teaching skills from the outdoors to the classroom and earned his Master's degree in Educational Leadership.
After four years in the classroom teaching middle and high school Social Studies, Greg joined Academy for Global Exploration as Head of School. Developing and expanding an internationally traveling high school was the prefect synthesis of Greg’s background in business, education, and outdoor adventure. As the principal administrator and guide, Greg led teens on extended academic and outdoor adventure semesters in South Africa, Greece, Japan, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Colombia, and Panama and across 20 of the United States. Blending rigorous experiential academics, in-depth cultural studies, community building curriculum with challenging outdoor adventure components has been the focus of Greg’s career.
Greg now joins Watershed after four years as Head of School for AGE. He currently holds a Colorado Alternative Administrator License and Oregon and Colorado Teaching Licenses for 6-12 Social Studies. His love for the outdoors has taken him climbing in Kalymnos, Greece, skiing in Hokkaido, Japan, and paddling on some of the most remote rivers in Costa Rica. Additionally, Greg is a Wilderness First Responder and an Eagle Scout.
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Tara King
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Lucas Dayley
Lucas recently completed his teaching licensure program at the University of Colorado in secondary mathematics. Prior to becoming a teacher, he spent twenty-years in the maritime industry as a merchant seaman, a boat captain in the San Francisco Bay, and an educator in a semester at sea program. All of these experiences led him to his passion of teaching middle school mathematics.
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Kelly McAllister
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Hannah McNeill
Hannah grew up along the shore of Lake Michigan in Evanston, IL. She spent several summers at Camp Echo, a YMCA camp and outdoor education center. It is nestled on a 427 acre plot--housing different ecosystems and a variety of flora and fauna; this was where her love for the outdoors and teaching began.
This passion for nature and education led her around the country, from Philadelphia, PA to Burlington, VT and finally here to Boulder, CO. The titles she has held at different schools vary widely--science teacher, sports teacher, math teacher, wilderness trip leader, and special educator. But her goal has stayed the same: to provide meaningful education in a creative way that will inspire students to do their best. She believes that patience, encouragement, creativity, and consistency help to create a positive and supportive environment that teaches the whole child, and allows them to discover the beauty and complexity of the world around them.
Hannah began her education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison receiving her B.S. in Biology. She then completed a year of service with City Year, Greater Philadelphia, an Americorps program, giving her an appetite for positive change and a desire to contribute to communities through community service. After several years of teaching, she went back to school to learn more about how to teach to students with different learning styles by getting her masters degree in Special Education at the University of Vermont.
When not teaching, Hannah can be found doing Aikido at Boulder Aikikai, or spending time with her husband and two dogs. |
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Elizabeth Meador, Ph.D.
Liz began her career as an educator in 1980 in Juneau, Alaska, where she taught reading to Native American children. She has since taught Kindergarten through graduate school and has been a principal, teacher educator and educational researcher. Her work has been published in scholarly journals such as Anthropology and Education Quarterly and Equity & Excellence in Education, and she has presented her research on multicultural education at professional conferences nationally and internationally. Liz was introduced to experiential education at the Aspen Community School when she enrolled her three children there. She soon became enamored with the curriculum and became a teacher leading trips to the wilderness and Mexico, helping with the annual school musical and learning first hand about the tenets of progressive education. Her passion for education stems from these early experiences with schools that focused on engaging the whole child on a journey of discovery, a journey that she believes is critical to the development of the intellect.
Liz's graduate degrees include a teaching degree from the University of Alaska, an MA in Curriculum and Leadership from University of Denver, and a PhD in Multicultural Foundations of Education from University of Colorado. Her favorite pastimes include skiing, hiking, biking and swimming. Her children are now grown and live in the mountains of Colorado.
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Jeff Osgood
Middle School Educator
303-440-7520, extension 108
jeff@watershedschool.org
Jeff grew up in central Ohio, but a fateful backpacking trip to Colorado and Utah as a teen firmly anchored his heart in the American West. After graduating from Ohio University with an MFA in film and working for a year in film and video production, Jeff hoodwinked his wife into moving to Boulder.
Jeff entered education in 1999. He’s worked with just about every age group and ability level. He’s assisted special needs kids at the elementary level, taught English to high school students, led writing courses for adults, and guided middle school learners through humanities, animation and video production. Jeff has worked in public schools as well as independent educational settings such as The Governor’s Summer Institute in Akron, Ohio and Alexander Dawson Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning.
Outside of the classroom, Jeff wrangles his four children, keeps bees, and grows vegetables. He is also a published and prize-winning writer. In his meager spare time, Jeff slips away to the Desert Southwest in search of mystery and peace.
Jeff’s hopes as an educator are to provide a variety of resources and genuine opportunities for every one of his students. With respect, understanding, and patience, he strives to realize every student’s attributes and potential. |
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Alexis Rebane
Office Manager and Registrar
303-440-7520, extension 101
office@watershedschool.org
Alexis grew up surrounded by lakes in beautiful Minneapolis, MN. There she went on frequent camping trips and incurred the wrath of thousands of mosquitoes. Upon recovering from the bites, and graduating from high school, she made her way to Beantown to attend Tufts University. Double majoring in Women's Studies and American Studies, she benefited from an interdisciplinary approach to education.
After college Alexis took a roadtrip to Colorado and was drawn to Boulder, in large part because of the amazing Ultimate Frisbee community thriving here. She also became invested working for local young adult author T.A. Barron. A lot of her time and energy went to The Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes, a non-profit that gives grants to young people doing great work in their communities.
In the spring of 2008, Alexis put her things in storage to travel around Asia with her brother. In Korea, they had the opportunity to design and implement an English-immersion summer camp progam for kids. She also got to practice another love, black & white photography, and would be happy to show you some of her trip photos! Now that she's back, Alexis is excited to be a part of the Watershed community. |
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Taylor Replane
A proud Hoosier, Taylor grew up in Granger, Indiana, home to corn, pick-up trucks, and Notre Dame Football. At an early age, Taylor drew constantly, encouraged by his mom and dad as they would position their hands or set up objects to draw during dinners with friends and family. In high school, Taylor took as many art classes as he could, and worked under a great teacher and mentor, Mr. Thom Andrea. Mr. A's passion for art and his ability to connect to his students, as well as a few other outstanding teachers, first influenced Taylor to seek education. While attending Indiana University, Taylor made a visit to a camp fair where a big, friendly, Californian gave him a job as a camp counselor at Mountain Camp, an overnight adventure camp near Pollock Pines, CA. Mountain camp ignited Taylor's lifelong love with wilderness and outdoor education.
After bouncing around from subject to subject at Indiana, Taylor combined his two favorite loves, art and education, and graduated with a degree in Visual Arts Education. Taylor spent his student teaching year pursuing a graduate degree in Education in the Navajo Nation, living at Grey Hills Academy in Tuba City Arizona. This experience has had a lasting impact on Taylor's life and pedagogy.
Somewhere between Indiana and Boulder, Taylor worked every job from Golf Caddy to Food Delivery Man. A few of the most inspiring and influential occupations were guiding for Moondance Adventures, a wilderness adventure program for students that uses NOLS’ guiding principles as a framework for their education. Also, a stint as an organic farmer initially inspired Taylor to start a current endeavor, Taylor's Tinys, an organic donut company located at the
Boulder and Longmont Farmer’s Market.
Between teaching and selling donuts, Taylor loves to be outside, play music, and create art. None of this would ever be possible without the love and support of wonderful friends and family.
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Kathleen McGarry
Director of Admissions & External Relations
303-440-7520, extension 103
kathleen@watershedschool.org
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Sarah Gutierrez
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Pablo Stayton
Pablo's love of the outdoors, commitment to innovative educational practices, and experience with teens is reflected in his 20-plus years of professional work. For the past nine years, Pablo taught high school Spanish and Humanities at the Rocky Mountain School of Expeditionary Learning in Denver. When he wasn't working with students exploring such complex topics as human rights, the meaning of culture, or the relationship between the structure of U.S. government and capitalism, he could be found teaching rock climbing, Mexican cooking, or salsa dancing, or dressed up in a skirt and sombrero telling a story in Spanish with animal puppets. Each year, Pablo took students on trips to the Texas/Mexico border and the Copper Canyon, two areas where, as an Outward Bound instructor, he had developed deep connections with both the people and the natural landscape.
Before becoming a high school teacher, Pablo worked with Outward Bound in many capacities: senior instructor, course director, instructor trainer, and safety coordinator. He has spent 1200+ days leading wilderness expeditions with groups of all ages. He was also a senior administrator, directing OB base camps on the Texas/Mexico border, and in Arizona. This past summer, Pablo was an instructor for Puerto Rican Expeditionary Learning teachers and administrators; it was the first-ever Colorado Outward Bound course conducted entirely in Spanish.
Pablo earned a Masters of Global Studies from Denver University, with a concentration in human rights. His thesis focused on the Tarahumara Indians in the Copper Canyon.
Pablo's interests include carpentry, backpacking, canoeing, traveling, and climbing. He also enjoys playing musical instruments and singing with his three-year-old son, Lee.
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