Barbara Lawlor, Nederland. After a month of classes at NMSHS new students and teachers and administrators have had a chance to settle in, to understand their environment and to have a sense of what the year is going to look like.

Daniel Shea is the new Health and Fitness teacher and he comes  to Nederland with 30 years of immersion into the health and fitness world.

Originally from Richmond, Virginia, Shea began teaching Health & Physical Education and coaching Cross-Country & Track, at Matoaca Middle School, in 2001. He  taught and coached middle school and high school in Virginia until 2008, when his wife was transferred to Austin, Texas, where Shea taught Health and Physical Education until 201I.

His wife received another promotion and the couple relocated to Colorado. "After an initial struggle to jump start my teaching career, I was finally offered a position, via BVSD, at NMSHS.  I love sharing my enthusiasm for lifelong fitness with youth and demonstrating why it is so vitally important."

Shea is no stranger to the Nederland area, which he discovered in the 90s while living, training, and racing triathlons and snowshoe races in Boulder from 1990-2000.

Obsessed with training and racing, he caught the fitness bug. Shea learned a tremendous amount about fitness by training with some world-class athletes, to date completing close to 1,000 races, including 36 marathons—Boston, three times—and an Iron Man.

A nationally certified running coach, Shea has coached multiple running teams, including several Team In Training groups, affiliated with the Leukemia Lymphoma Society. He also recently spearheaded the first Bolder-Boulder YMCA Training Team.

Shea lives in Lafayette with his wife, two young daughters and Frisco the border collie. "I am ecstatic to be back in Colorado for good.  I still love running and racing, but have calmed down considerably. "

Heather Politi teaches sixth grade exploratory and eighth grade math. She earned  Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in mathematics from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.     "After university, I worked as a mathematician for several years before realizing that what I really wanted to do was share my enthusiasm for mathematics with young people. I whole-heartedly believe that it is vital for students to have great math teachers for all levels of mathematics courses in order to be challenged to deeply understand the material, rather than learn it simply as a process to be completed."

Politi says the logical thinking and creative problem solving that students learn through studying mathematics are skills that help them develop as intelligent consumers and evaluators of information all around them.

Her first three years of teaching were in Baltimore City public schools, followed by two years at the International School of Sosua in the Dominican Republic. Over the past two years, she has taught with Swiss Semester and The Traveling School, which both offer alternative semester abroad programs with outdoor education and cultural immersion experiences.

"As a teacher, I am fortunate to be part of the learning process every day. I share in the frustrations of being stuck or confused and in the elation of finally figuring something out. I believe that when students are able to learn new material through work on a compelling problem, they practice persistence and divergent thinking while also making sense of new topics and connections to previous knowledge."

Many times Politi has students work on problems in small groups, which requires them to practice collaboration and verbal communication. Finding and adapting problems to fit with the curriculum is an ongoing process in her planning.

While teaching in Baltimore, she participated with her students in Burton’s Chill Snowboarding program which aims to teach young adults patience, persistence, respect, courage, and collaboration. “With both Swiss Semester and The Traveling School, I supported students academically through teaching courses including math, Spanish, PE, and Global Studies, but also participated with students in outdoor experiences such as backpacking, skiing, climbing, rafting, and surfing, and guided students through language immersion and homestay experience.

"I am excited to learn and facilitate my students’ learning in the classroom and the outdoors of Nederland. Just this past week, I was fortunate to attend a STEM conference in Washington, DC, with several colleagues from the school. The conference focused on designing engaging cross-curricular projects that require students to think critically about sustainability and their environment."

Melissa Budde teaches language arts. After graduating from college with a Bachelor's degree in English, Budde moved to Eugene, Oregon, and visited family members who were teachers. "After spending time with them I realized that this was the career I wanted to pursue."

Budde begins her 14th year in education. She worked at a middle school in Westminster for the last 13 years, spending the first seven years as an eighth-grade language arts teacher, and then the last six years as the teacher librarian of the school.

Deciding it was time to make an educational change, she interviewed for the language arts position at NMSHS. She lives in Coal Creek Canyon and her daughter will be going to the mountain school next year, so she wanted to work in a mountain community. "I am excited to be working here and am enjoying working in this community."

When she is not teaching, she spends time with her four-year-old daughter, Lucy, and two-year-old son, Asa.  She enjoys taking them hiking, camping, canoeing, and all over the Denver and the surrounding areas to see and do different things. Budde loves to read, especially young adult books. She either listens to a book in her car, reads a young adult book at home, or reads to her children.

Mark Mabbett, School Media Specialist, “became a teacher because I liked working with students.  I really like being around the energy they bring."

Mark Mabbett grew up in Northern California in Grass Valley in the foothills between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe. He went to college at CSU Chico and CU Boulder and has been a librarian for the past eight years. Mabbett says all of his work has been done at CU but he was excited to change schools for the opportunity to come to Nederland Middle-Senior High School.

He originally came to Boulder to go to grad school, but once his children were born this area became home. Mabbett says he came up to Nederland because it gave him a school that was small and allowed him to be part of a close-knit school community.

"My philosophy is that all students need to be able to do research and find and access the information they need.  I bring a lot of experience helping researchers and students at CU find and access information.  I think I am pretty approachable when it comes to helping people do research."

When Mabbett is not at NMSHS, he likes to play with technology, spend as much time traipsing around outside with his kids, reading fantasy books, and playing at the gym.

"I like Ned.  The scenery is amazing and being part of this school has been a great experience."