Mr. Tichy ended up at Parker School after graduating from a small liberal arts school in Minnesota. There he studied social studies education. For a month he volunteered at Kamehameha Middle School on Oahu, where the host teacher he was helping there recommended that he apply to Parker School. At first he was hesitant because he liked his current position, but his host teacher said that Parker would be a great opportunity for him and that he needed to apply.
After starting the application process, he became more and more excited about this opportunity at Parker School. Before Mr. Tichy was hired, he was invited to teach a mock lesson for Mr. Po's AP history class. He was struggling to decide what to teach the students about and ended up teaching them about spies and the cold war. In preparation, he ended up writing three different versions of the same lesson, as he wanted to ensure that he would have enough time to present it. He wanted to make sure that the students would be able to get the best understanding of the topic, which is a goal that greatly influences his teaching style.
In middle school, Mr. Tichy had teachers that he felt did not teach their students and simply assigned them classwork and homework instead. After graduating middle school, he went to a high school where teachers were constantly pushing their students to fully learn the content, the opposite of his middle school experience of packets and worksheets. While he may not have noticed it at the time, this encouraged him to be a better teacher than the ones he grew up with.
After applying to 28 different colleges around the world, Mr. Tichy went to school for economics, but quickly realized he would rather teach economics and share his knowledge. After shadowing a financial planner, he became more confident that he did not want to continue studying economics. He says that every day working there was “the worst day of my life.”
His academic advisor recommended he take an education course and volunteer with a 3rd-grade class. Shortly after, Mr. Tichy fell in love with teaching. Each semester he continued to volunteer over 100 hours in a classroom. He would use breaks such as fall break as more time to be in the classroom. He would spend hours coming up with crazy complex lesson plans.
Photo provided by Mr. Tichy
Mr. Tichy’s favorite part about teaching is helping students. Being able to see a student who did not get a topic at first, understand it once he explains it differently makes him love being a teacher. He says that waking up every day and knowing that he is going to teach at Parker School is “a dream come true.”
Here are some fun facts about Mr. Tichy: He loves to travel and some of his favorite places he has visited are Colorado, Nevada, and Arizona. He loves the city after growing up in Chicago, Illinois. He says that “Anything that is urban and I can explore a lot, I love it to death.” He calls pink his power color, which is why it is his favorite. He used to competitively ballroom dance in college. He also loves to cook, however he does not get in the kitchen very often. He is the second oldest out of six siblings and his youngest sister is a sophomore in high school. He can speak Russian. In college, he had a tradition with his friends where on the coldest day in February they would cook steaks. They would dig a fire pit in the snow and grill steaks in the snow.
Mr Tichy is a wonderful person with a passion for teaching that is reflected in his classroom. His students love his class and many would consider him their favorite teacher. All students at Parker School, from 6th graders to seniors, enjoy talking to and learning from him.