One of the five new incoming teachers here at Sage, Frank Gonzales brings a new perspective to Sage Hill learning. Coming from the University of Chicago and the University of Oxford, he begins his Sage Hill career as an AP government and psychology substitute teacher.

Gonzales has a sense of calmness and assurance about his stance on Sage Hill: “there’s such a strong focus on community here.” He applauds how Sage “[integrates] every student and faculty into the community and nobody is left out. Even though people are different, Sage emphasizes inclusivity.” In addition, he points out how this high school’s primary focus is on education, taking precedent over athletics or other extracurricular activities.

He describes his new experience at Sage as a “learning process.”

“When you join a new school you end up having to learn about the culture of the school, about the traditions, about the climate, how social people are or how involved everybody is. I think that really takes up a lot of energy and time but it has a huge reward if you really try to get involved because you can end up seeing how well you fit in and also the potential of being able to get involved.”

When someone from an outside perspective has already captured the true mission of our school, it shows that Sage has done its job in advocating community. The unity we promote here has positively disseminated not only through our students, but also the faculty members of our school.

Gonzales smiled as he also talked about how being at a new school has “made him learn how to thrive as an educator.” His favorite thing about teaching both AP government and Psychology is how relevant the issues are to today: “It’s great to teach this class during the start of an election cycle because there’s a lot more contemporary relevance to today’s news.”

He described that both subjects are interconnected in that, “government is psychology in how candidates start using the mind to manipulate and influence the audiences’ decisions for benefit of the whole.”