At the end of last school year, the Garfield community said many tearful goodbyes to teachers leaving the building.

Mr. Johnson

This summer, former Garfield chemistry teacher Meade Johnson moved to a small village in England with his family. He and his wife, Laurie, decided to leave the United States for a couple of years because they wanted to expose their kids to a different way of life.

“We both love to travel and value learning from different experiences, from being out of our comfort zone, and from different cultures,” he said. “We want to expand upon our international-mindedness, and then to be able to travel too from where we are.”

Johnson says he misses the energy and the cultural diversity of the Garfield student body.

“I miss my colleagues,” he said, “and I miss the kids.”

Since his arrival in the United Kingdom, Johnson has faced the fact that people in England speak a different type of English.

“I’ve picked up at least a couple dozen words,” he said. “It’s not cell phone, it’s ‘mobile’; gas, ‘petrol’; ‘trousers’ are pants, and ‘pants’ are underpants.”

He ran into trouble when he used his American English in a conversation with women who were talking about lost arts.

“I said I used to sew, and one time I hemmed my sister’s pants,” he said. “They all burst into laughter.”

Although his three-year-old son speaks with an accent half the time, Johnson insists he won’t adopt a British accent any time soon. He also claims to be loyal to American spelling, even though spell check frequently reminds him that ‘color’ should be spelled ‘colour.’

“I remain proud of my spelling,” he said, “but the British spelling looks nice, so in a few months I might feel differently.”

Johnson said he doesn’t miss Seattle’s so-called natural beauty.

“If you call the number 26 bus line in front of my house natural beauty, then I’m faring far better here,” he said. “There’s a lot more green space here than in Seattle. And there are fields with horses and cows and meadows.”

At times, his new neighborhood resembles a farm.

“On the road that we live there are regularly giant piles of horse poo,” he admitted.

Mr. Miranda

After years of teaching at Garfield and advising the school newspaper, legendary writing teacher Steve Miranda quit his job to find a school more fitting for him.

He had begun to wonder about the effectiveness of the classroom and the system of learning that was presented. One of Miranda’s biggest issues with the teaching style at Garfield was the negative atmosphere that circulated around the grading system.

On his blog, stevemiranda​.wordpress​.com, Miranda explains how he tried to teach freely, focusing on discussions and projects, not homework and grades. Instead of embracing the new style, students took advantage of the freedom, claiming to “do nothing” in his class.

When he initiated a schedule of regular worksheets and multiple-choice tests, however, the students decided they were actually in a real classroom again.

“When I teach well,” he wrote, “students think I’m teaching poorly. When I teach poorly, they think I’m teaching well.”

He knew it wasn’t the students’ fault, but rather the fault of the societal system present at most schools. Miranda found the style he was looking for at Puget Sound Community School, where he now happily works as an administrator.

Miranda likes his new job, and embraces the unique style of the school.

“At PSCS, we try to help students discover what they’re passionate about, then help them pursue it,” Miranda said. “There are no grades, no academic requirements. It’s an incredible place.”

He went on to explain that the mood of the school is extremely happy; students can choose to participate in the certain activities that they are truly passionate about.

“That doesn’t mean that people sit around playing video games all day,” added Miranda.

Most of the older students all meet for a pre-calc class, getting together three days a week and receiving a fair amount of homework. Miranda believes that the students all chose to enroll for this class because the system gave them the freedom to pick what they wanted.

“They came to the conclusion on their own that math is important,” said Miranda. “When you trust young people, amazing things tend to happen, a notion that society has a very hard time grasping.”

Although he loves the system in his new school, Miranda admits to missing Garfield’s community.

“I miss a lot of people,” said Miranda. “Garfield is filled with wonderful, amazing people who made my life richer than it otherwise would have been. I have very fond memories of Garfield.”