Mr. Todd Bohannon is a Bellevue native and attended Spiritridge Elementary, Tillicum Middle School, and Sammamish High School. Growing up here in Western Washington, he spent much of his youth running around outdoors, which has fueled a lifelong passion for the natural world. During the summers, he attended camps through the YMCA, which eventually lead to his becoming a camp counselor, that would later influence his decision to become a classroom teacher.
He holds a B.A. in Media Studies from Evergreen State College, and spent three years in advertising before realizing he needed to quit his job and go back to school to become an educator.
Todd completed his student teaching in Seattle Public Schools at Thornton Creek Elementary (then AE2) in a split, 4th/5th grade classroom and was later hired on as a full time, classroom teacher. Thornton Creek is a project-based, arts focused, interdisciplinary program that shares many similarities with Renaissance. He subsequently earned his master's degree, researching and developing techniques for utilizing Shakespeare-based curriculum in an elementary classroom.
In addition to teaching at Thornton Creek, Todd has been involved with a number of environmental education organizations, such as No Barriers Youth, an international immersion program for kids (formerly known as Global Explorers). No Barriers is a fantastic, non-profit organization that provides students with transformative experiences in a number of locations around that world. Working primarily with middle and high school students, he has taken four groups of students to the Peruvian Amazon and the Peruvian Andes. It has been a brilliant, life-changing adventure and I plan to lead another trip in the near future!
Todd is also a volunteer educator for REEF, the Reef Environmental Education Foundation, whose head office is located in Key Largo. REEF works on a number of marine conservation projects around the world, including a vast citizen science project that trains people to identify and survey fish populations in tropical reefs around the world. For the past five years, he has been working with REEF on a project known as The Grouper Moon Project, in the Cayman Islands. The goal of the project is to protect the Nassau Grouper, an apex predator in Caribbean coral reefs, which is now on the brink of extinction. Every winter he travels to the Caribbean to work with teachers and students to educate them about the Grouper, tropical reef ecology, and to connect classrooms with the scientists working in the field. He will be joining the project again this winter and students here at Renaissance will have the opportunity to participate by engaging in classroom activities and live video feeds with him and researchers in the field. You can find more information at his blog: www.groupereducation.edublogs.org.
Todd is extremely grateful to be a new member of the Renaissance family and is super excited to continue to pursue his passion for teaching here on the Sammamish Plateau.
Tbohannon@lwsd.org
Renaissance School of Art and Reasoning
Martha Daman, last remaining founding member of the Renaissance School of Art and Reasoning staff and lead teacher, teaches eighth grade language arts and History, sixth through eighth grade Performing Arts, and Guild (aka. advisory). Her preferred pronouns are she, her, and hers.