Alumni Network: Chris Powers '00

Chris Powers ’00 is living a dual life! He’s somehow managed to balance a teaching career at Shorecrest - helping the school into the digital age by establishing an online learning curriculum - while at the same time fostering a burgeoning music career with his band, The Hip Abduction.

 

A faculty brat (son of Spanish teacher Cary Powers) following graduation from Shorecrest in 2000, Chris matriculated to Franklin & Marshall where he fostered a passion for philosophy. After receiving his Bachelor’s degree, Chris joined an international teaching program where he traveled to Micronesia and taught English for two years --discovering a passion for education.

 

Upon moving back to St. Petersburg in 2006, Chris started picking up music gigs and odd jobs here and there, before connecting with the former Shorecrest Upper School Head who told him there was an opening at Shorecrest teaching English and working as a College Counselor.  Chris explains, “I had worked with kids in Micronesia doing some college counseling on top of teaching. Students in Micronesia are actually eligible for US federal scholarship grants due to a compact with the US, so I was filling out a lot of FAFSAs. I’d ask my students ‘What is your estimated family contribution?’ My students would answer ‘Well, my dad has 11 pigs and we have about 200 pounds of yam.’ So it was a little different than here—but I did have the experience!” Chris applied for the position at Shorecrest and started working at his alma mater in Fall 2007.

 

Around the same time, he hooked up with one of his current bandmates and shortly thereafter they formed The Hip Abduction, a six-piece afropop rock band that weaves together Western pop aesthetics with African rhythms and traditions.

 

From 2007 to 2011 at Shorecrest, along with teaching and working in the college counseling office, Chris was working with a small handful of students who were taking online classes at Shorecrest. Chris explains how he got involved in the online learning program, “I was young and understood computers, and I had taken a few online classes before. Since I was in the college office, I was involved in mailing transcripts, and so I inadvertently got involved in the online learning aspect of Shorecrest, which at the time was pretty informal. That said, when I started teaching back in 2007, I was teaching a blended class with learning management software, so I’ve never taught a class at Shorecrest that meets every day in a classroom like all the classes were when I went to Shorecrest.”

 

So in 2012, when Shorecrest underwent a major strategic planning initiative, and online learning was one of the strategic initiatives envisioned for 2015, Chris was a natural faculty member to spearhead that effort. Chris had already been attending conferences for online and blended classroom educators, and when he heard that another independent school, The Barstow School in Kansas City, was opening the global online program they had started, the Hybrid Learning Consortium, to domestic schools, he pursued this partnership. In 2013, Shorecrest became one of the founding domestic partners of the Hybrid Learning Consortium. Today, the Consortium has over 14 domestic member schools and 6 international member schools, and has many more applicant schools than there are spaces in the consortium. Last fall, Chris left his job in college counseling and is now working full time teaching and working as Shorecrest’s Director of Online Learning.

 

His band, The Hip Abduction, continues to do well—last year they played in 84 venues around the country and they are releasing their third nationally released album this spring. Chris has managed to continue working for Shorecrest by sometimes holding conferences with his online students via Skype, not from his office at Shorecrest, but from the lobby of a hotel on the road. We should note here in writing that Chris has promised to fund the Chris Powers Recording Studio on campus one day when the band makes it big!

 

 

Chris: The program is very organic and collaborative. There is constant communication, not only teacher to student, but also teacher to teacher. So if a teacher at Interlochen Arts Camp in Michigan has an issue with a student, she’ll contact me here as the Director of Online Learning, and I’ll connect with that student in person, and ensure they make an appointment to skype with their teacher at Interlochen. It’s crazy that these faculty members are in Michigan and I have the same peer relationship with them as I do with my peers here at Shorecrest, talking about advisees. The kids are held accountable, even though they are enrolled in online classes. These classes are not self-paced Internet textbooks. They are seminars, they are engaging, these are heavy-writing classes. If students think they are getting off easy taking an online class, they are wrong!

 

 

Chris: It’s a bit counterintuitive to me, because as an alumnus I think… any Shorecrest kid should have Mr. Moore and they should sit through Doc’s AP English Lit class, because it worked for me! There is certainly this perspective of time spent in the rigor of a traditional classroom, and really spearheading this online initiative has meant not compromising that rigor. We’re not just going to provide an online learning program for online learning’s sake because it’s new or exciting. These classes legitimately have to be of equivalent rigor to a Shorecrest education or else we aren’t going to encourage it. The fact of the matter is, 95% of students in college are going to have to take an online class, so if we’re not preparing them for that, we’re failing as educators.

 

 

Chris: It took almost four years to start calling Mr. Field “Dave”. He’s still Mr. Field to me - my AP Geometry teacher, whose class I prayed for a B- in.

 

 

Chris: The community feel of the school and knowing that my teachers not only cared about how well I did in their class, but also cared that I was a good person, and happy, and engaged—I think that was so immensely important when I was a teenager.

 

 

Chris: No. I had no idea… I wanted them to leave me alone! But it’s in hindsight that you see that. It’s in hindsight that you go to college and talk to other students about their high school experience and you realize everyone doesn’t have these kinds of teachers. Teachers at Shorecrest stay here into the evening to make sure their students are doing well. Now that I’m a faculty member I see all these behind-the-scenes conversations about how faculty members can better engage the students. The faculty here are so invested in their work!

 

Chris: Sure! Even if we were touring the world, I hope I could still teach online and engage and work with kids. As much as playing music is part of me, so is teaching. I already have the spot [on Shorecrest's campus] where I want a tree after 30 years all picked out!