by WRIGLEY ZBYSZEWSKI and VICTORIA GEORGE
Dr. Bryan Nelle’s career has taken him across the world and back, and now that he has returned to California, he hopes to bring his vast life experiences to his students.
A Southern California native, Nelle, a Chadwick history teacher, hails from San Diego, where he spent much of his time surfing and connecting with the natural world as a kid.
When it came time for college, Nelle chose Long Beach State, where he initially studied marine biology. After some time in school, he realized he hadn’t found his passion yet, and decided to drop out to try something new: firefighting.
“I did that for about 2 1⁄2 years and was on the path to becoming a paramedic,” said Nelle, who worked with the Long Beach Fire Department as an emergency medical technician (EMT).
Still, Nelle spent more and more time watching political news and discovered a newly formed passion for politics. He decided to go back to Long Beach State to take classes in political philosophy.
“I was totally captivated by philosophy in my very first class,” Nelle said.
“I was just absolutely hooked. Initially, I couldn’t understand it at all, so much so that it was like learning a foreign language. But I powered through it.”
Soon enough, he was on his way to graduate school at UC Irvine, where he would earn his Ph.D. in political science, with an emphasis on political theory. But his path to teaching would come through his then-girlfriend and now wife, Jessica, who was teaching at Chadwick in the Village School. Soon after Nelle’s graduation, the opportunity to teach at Chadwick International in Songdo, Korea, was presented to the couple.
“I had always wanted to live abroad, and I had this undying part of me that just loves adventure and being abroad and exploring new things,” Nelle said. “We planned to stay only for a year, but we just loved it so much that we ended up staying there for eight years.”
But adjusting to an entirely new culture was not an easy task for the couple. With new cultural norms and a completely different language, Korea offered many different challenges.
“Teaching students of another culture was an adjustment,” Nelle said. “But being away from family was a huge challenge. Having technology made it slightly easier, but it was still really hard.”
After the birth of their son, Easton, the couple returned to the United States and Chadwick in 2022. Nelle took on a position teaching Global Studies II: History 10 and AP Capstone Seminar, while Jessica Nelle returned to her post teaching a fifth-grade class in the Village School.
Nelle strives to make the same impact on his American students as he did with his students in CI: bringing energy and passion to the classroom.
“I want students to see and feel my interest and passion for what we’re learning,” he said. “I want students to feel that I love this stuff, and I could talk about it all day. So, I try to exude that in the classroom.”
Sophomore Miranda Santana is currently taking Nelle’s Global Studies course, and can attest to the energetic classroom Nelle fosters.
“Dr. Nelle’s class is both captivating and exciting due to his consistently upbeat demeanor,” Santana said.
“His supportive nature creates a learning environment, where I feel at ease to ask any questions because I know that he will provide great feedback.”
Nelle values the engagement of his students, going the extra mile to make the material as interesting as possible. With such dense content in both of his courses, he works to make the workload feel more manageable.
Ultimately, Nelle hopes to inspire genuine intrigue in his students, so that not only are they well-versed in the material, but they also understand the deeper impact of it with a global perspective.
“My job as a teacher is not to tell them which perspective is right, but to present them with perspectives that respond to questions and have students grapple with those,” he said. “My hope is that my class is one of those classes where you don’t ever have to look up at the clock.”
The Mainsheet 