Who We Are: Dustin Schmidt, Associate Director & Teacher

IVA High’s unique approach to teaching and learning requires teachers who are equally as unique and innovative. No small feat for a small, tuition-free charter school, we have hired a team of dedicated teachers who are highly qualified, with 75% of our teachers holding a Master's degree or higher. Our teachers readily think outside the box to provide the best possible education for our students. Dustin Schmidt is a great example of our dynamic teaching staff. Mr. Schmidt is our Associate Director and philosophy teacher. Get to know founding teacher Mr. Schmidt, in his own words below:

Who or what inspired you to become an educator? 

Educating seemed like a way to be creative, caring, and be of direct service to our community. I often tell my students that I need them to be critical, compassionate thinkers because they will share this community with my children one day. I'm helping empower their future comrades.

Also, IVA High is such a unique place I often wonder if I like teaching or if I just like teaching here. What I love most is building this community with people who have chosen it.

How does IVA High's mission and vision align with your personal and professional values? 

I take humility, curiosity and open-mindedness to be extremely important traits for people trying to live in a diverse democracy, but also for people interested in their own growth. I expect people to strive for these dispositions, but I also notice them diminishing. I hope that our model, and our work to give students ownership and voice, creates a space where students and faculty are able to both develop and appreciate these qualities in one another. Listening to one another, navigating difficult conversations, finding empathy and understanding, and the building together from that synthesis is the best we can hope for, I think. Both as a society and as a school. At IVA High, we take that process to be the goal, and I treasure that.

What do you love most about your role at IVA High? 

As both a teacher and administrator, I love having to collaborate. Everything we do happens as a result of collaboration: curriculum, field trips, professional development, student support. Somehow, we have found a groove of bolstering individual autonomy and creativity, but fostering that within a context driven by feedback, connection, and collaboration. I feel free to create and build, but never have to do it alone.

Share a favorite memory of your work at IVA High. 

The last two years, we have gone on senior camping trips. It's so much fun to get to connect with students just as people, in situations where they may be outside of their comfort zones, or just in a different context. Ms. Makenna and I created this opportunity, and it is tons of work and stress, but then when a kid jumps off a boulder into a freezing river or drinks straight from a mountain waterfall, it's worth it many times over.

Tell us a bit about you.

I am married with two kids. My wife has been a freelancing Mom for the last little while, meaning she has been home to support our kids, but also finds ways to work while doing so, whether nannying, surveying for the census, temping, etc. Incredible woman stretching herself to make it all happen. We have 2 kids. Violet is 7 and is very into theater (currently in Peter Pan) and conducting anthropologist-like studies of teenagers in the wild to understand their culture. Ollie is 2. He is named after skateboarding, and garbage trucks are his entire universe.

I grew up in Hawaii very into skateboarding, and in subcultures surrounding skateboarding: punk rock, hip hop, graffiti art, etc. These still are primary aspects of my personality, and at some level form the reasons I became an educator. I am also really into camping, backpacking, environmentalism, and social justice movements. I want to be in nature with my family more.

Before coming to IVA High, I was earning my PhD in philosophy at UW, Seattle. My research was in environmental ethics, climate ethics, and feminist ethics. I was a fellow at the Center for Philosophy for Children at UW, where we did outreach to Seattle public schools to integrate philosophy into curriculum. I earned my BA in philosophy from Reed College, after transferring from Seattle Central Community College. I was not a successful high school student (graduated with a 1.6 GPA).

Thank you, Mr. Schmidt, for helping make our unique school a more interesting, more caring place to learn. Always tuition-free, and always here for you, our high school is now enrolling for Fall 2023. Don’t miss out.