A beloved AP World History and United States History teacher, Mr. Cade Nethercott has been teaching at Saint Francis for seven years. Alongside Mr. Jonah Carson, Mr. Nethercott coaches the Boys’ Varsity Volleyball team. We interviewed Mr. Nethercott to gain a better understanding of what led him to become a Social Studies teacher, and what his life is like outside of the classroom.
The Lancer: Where did you grow up, and what was your experience like as a student in high school and college?
Mr. Cade Nethercott: I grew up in the mountains, in Wyoming. I went to a public high school. I was in a class of 115 kids. My whole high school was about 500; it was the only high school in our county. And our county is twice the size of Rhode Island, so it was a really big county, but it’s one of those mountain states with not a lot of people. So it’s a weird community. I grew up in Jackson Hole, which is near the ski resorts and stuff there, so we have a lot of different groups. There were a number of kids who were pretty wealthy, whose parents come there and have vacation homes and things like that. And then there was a group that I was more a part of, which is, I guess you called the town kids, right? My great grandparents had homesteaded the valley back before, more than a century ago, so there were a lot of families like us as well, kids who’ve been here for multiple generations. So it was small, but ultimately, it was a resort community, right? It’s sort of like a Vail or an Aspen or something like that. Lots of recreation, lots of national parks, lots of skiing. So lots of tourists.
TL: If you could go back, would you change that experience?
CN: Hindsight’s 20/20, right? There’s so many things I think I would have done differently, but I had a really nice upbringing in a really cool place. A nice little public high school.
TL: What led you to California and the Bay Area?
CN: I think we’ve always been heading this direction. My husband works in tech, as a recruiter for tech. We met in Denver, but then we lived in Boston for a long time, and then we moved back to Denver, and now we’re in San Francisco. We’ve moved around a lot, but it feels like we’re going to be here probably for a while.
TL: What made you decide to become a teacher?
CN: I was one of the early people; I knew in seventh and eighth grade. I took seventh and eighth grade history, and I just loved it. I knew in junior high that I wanted to be a teacher, and that was my subject. I was one of the lucky people, that I knew what I wanted to do.
TL: What’s your favorite part about the job?
CN: Well, number one, I love talking about my subject, right? I’m passionate about that part of it, and talking about connections between old stuff and new stuff, but it’s really about connections with you guys, right? Just so many of the things where you don’t know exactly which students you’re going to connect with; sometimes they become long term fixtures in your life. I have students from ten to fifteen years ago, who I still talk to a lot. And the opportunity not just to teach but to mentor, and to help kids along the way, I think all that’s just really rewarding.
TL: What makes Saint Francis special to you as an educator, and how does that reflect in students’ experiences?
CN: For me, it’s probably a lot of the traditions built around here. There’s a real strong sense of that community, and I think it’s testament to so many of the teachers and faculty who used to be students here, just as a demonstration of the deep ties that this can have. And as a history teacher, things like this that have real institutional memory and institutional importance, I think, become stronger parts of the wider community, right. So I can be in San Mateo or San Francisco or something like that and talk to people, and they’ll ask me where I work, and I tell them, and people recognize the name. I like that. And a beautiful campus, and I also think I excel in jobs where my kids are headed to college. That is because I teach AP, and that’s sort of where my teaching style lies. And so there’s a lot of great work that’s done in other high schools in different communities, but I like the aspect of I’m trying to help push you guys towards college.
TL: Where did your interest in volleyball come from?
CN: That came later. I started playing as an adult, in my 20s, in the park in Denver, and some friends invited me to learn how to play. I played a little bit in PE in high school and had fun, but there’s no boys’ volleyball in Wyoming. So I started playing as an adult, and then I played in leagues and things like that for a long time. I finally became a referee for a while. Then I started coaching ten or twelve years ago when I lived in New England, and that’s where it came from.
TL: You already spoke on what the most rewarding part of your job is, so you can reiterate that if you want, but also, what’s the most taxing part of your job?
CN: There’s a lot of grading. Particularly for teachers who teach writing, whether that’s in science or English, you guys do better with more feedback I can give, so I can’t just really read and score and move on. It’s a process when you have 75 or 80. It’s always a mountain to climb every time we take a test. That’s part of the job, too, but there’s always that deadline, you always have to be making progress. It’s easy if you plan for it, but then life shows up, and your kid gets sick, or we had a crazy bomb threat and we had to evacuate. Or the power goes out, or there’s a fire. Whatever they are, there’s all these other things that come up and throw a monkey wrench in the works.
TL: What is your teaching philosophy and how do you exemplify it in the classroom?
CN: I always say that the most important thing for me is that you guys come out as engaged citizens. I want you to understand that, and literally almost everything that I talk about—even if it seems obscure; we’re talking about the Mongols or trade in the 16th century—all that has to do, I think, with making you informed citizens. And you’re gonna walk into a voting booth one day, hopefully, you’re gonna have to make choices about taxes and education and spending and government funding and all these other things, and I want you to be informed citizens. I don’t care who you vote for; I want you to vote. I want you to be engaged, because it makes us all strong, right? I see that a big part of my job is civic engagement and trying to make you curious and trying to make you understand the world around you, so you can be better at that as an adult later on.
TL: What are some of your hobbies outside of the classroom?
CN: I like to take a swim with Mr. O’Neill over here once in a while. My personal hobbies, I read a ton.
TL: Do you have a favorite book? Or a favorite genre?
CN: Favorite novel? I try to read almost all fiction because I feel like so much of the stuff I see is nonfiction. I’ll throw one in from time to time, but in my personal time, I like to read fiction. My favorite book ever was actually one I read in high school. It’s called The Power of One by an Australian author named Bryce Courtenay. It’s just a magnificent book about a young boy growing up in WWII in South Africa. It’s period fiction. It’s amazing.
TL: Do you read more historical fiction?
CN: Some, but not necessarily. I love a good courtroom drama, or a spy novel, or any of those sorts of things.
TL: If you could travel to any time period, where would you go?
CN: As a fly on the wall, something like an ancient Roman forum or the Napoleonic Wars. I really love reading it. This is one of my weird niches. I really like reading about sailing ships and naval [adventure] and stuff like that. I’ve been recently listening to a podcast about a British admiral—Horatio Nelson’s Battle of the Nile. It’s historical, but it’s almost a narrative story. As far as historical time periods go, I really like the Napoleonic Wars. I’m a history teacher, there’s too many, honestly.
TL: What’s your favorite movie and TV show?
CN: All time?
TL: Yeah, why not? You can do right now, too.
CN: Favorite movie is Shawshank Redemption. Pretty old by now, but a really good one. My favorite TV show of all time, probably The West Wing, which is a presidential drama. My most recent in the last couple of years, I just got done watching Day of the Jackal, which is about an assassin. I thought that was really good. The Office, Schitt’s Creek, 30 Rock, Parks and Rec.
TL: Do you have a favorite food?
CN: I mean, who doesn’t like a piece of prime rib. Oh, my mother’s homemade turkey noodle soup. That’s nice.
TL: Do you have any siblings?
CN: I have one older brother, who is a police officer in the town I grew up in. Then he retired after twenty years because he could do that, and took another job, and has recently gone back to being a police officer in Wyoming because he was bored.
TL: What’s the best piece of advice someone’s ever given to you?
CN: The best piece of advice, I would say, try to be the person you needed when you were younger. That’s a really good one. And the other one I try to spread around would be that you were given this life for a reason, and that you’re strong enough to live it. We all have so many crosses to bear, and things we have to confront, and anxieties and stresses and things like that. Just a reminder that you’re strong.
Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
