Do you remember rollerblades?
They were big in the ‘90s, so big that there were entire magazines solely dedicated to the trend. In one of those magazines, new photo teacher Ryan Schude worked as a photographer with perhaps four other people. For 15 years, it was just one of his odd jobs as a freelance photographer, one reason he would spend his days crouched, developing film. But times changed, interest in rollerblades and photography magazines dried up.
To Mr. Schude, the rise of social media completely changed how people view and appreciate photos.
“When you’re looking at photos now, you’re just scrolling, you look at it for a split second,” Mr. Schude said. “Whereas I have a bunch of photo books that I brought in, and the idea is that you sit and look at the picture for a little while, for much longer. That’s the way people used to adjust photos.”
Mr. Schude still does freelance photography, and currently promotes his work on social media, that killer of magazines.
But after moving from Los Angeles and having a daughter, he was on the lookout for more consistent employment. An application led to an interview, and an interview landed Mr. Schude to his first ever teaching job. His qualifications are solely professional, with no specific training to be a teacher.
“I’m very much getting the hang of this world,” Mr. Schude saud. “My goal is to engage students in a way that, even though they’re learning, I want them to participate in choosing what that curriculum is to some extent.”
In the yearbook class, he entrusts the editors to collectively lead the project, as he reasons that they’ve known OVS far longer than he has himself. He also makes the effort to praise specific students when he believes they’ve brought their own passion and talent to school.
“When he is in the class, he is so good and patient for me because I can’t understand some words,” said freshman Joycelyn Liu. “He’s so nice.”
At home, Mr. Schude spends his time raising his 1-year-old daughter and taking out the remaining moving boxes, which he only hopes he could finish by the end of the year.
In the meantime, Mr. Schude feels confident that, on the day he sets aside the final box in his house, it would mark the end of his learning curve and the beginning of a steady, yet exciting, new career.
“They’re all ongoing processes that hopefully we can enjoy along the way,” he says. “I feel that way about teaching, about my old career and my current second career, the baby. It’s about taking deep breaths and remembering to enjoy the whole journey.”