Tom Mylchreest

Thomas Mylchreest is an economics teacher at the high school. He grew up in England and has taught for five years in Manchester. He has experience working with children in foster care programs. After high school, he visited Australia, Greece, Germany, France, and Monaco, but listed Boston as his favorite city. Additionally, Mylchreest would like to visit India when he turns thirty due to the cultural connection he developed during his childhood. He lives with his wife and his miniature dachshund, Rosie.

What drew you to Brookline High School?

My wife works at Boston Children’s Hospital, so it was the closest school. But when I got here, I fell in love with it and decided I wanted to teach here and make it a bigger part of my life. The aspects of Brookline High School that I like are that it’s like a college campus, and the kids are really engaged. Last year I did a spell in School Within a School (SWS). I like the fact that there’s a lot of experimental learning programs, and I like the fact that students are allowed to follow their interests a lot more than other schools, and I like that all of the faculty are really engaged, really smart people. I love being around all the colleagues and hearing their stories and learning from them as well, so there’s lots to experience here.

When you were young, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I wanted to be a soccer player. I wanted to play for Manchester United, and I liked the idea of training really hard for a couple hours a day and then having the rest of my time. And I didn’t just want to be a soccer player, I wanted to be a soccer player and then go to school for life in my spare time. So that was the plan, but I’m not sure if I was good enough to execute the plan.

What made you want to teach?

I fell into it, someone asked me to teach a class a long time ago and I really just loved it as soon as I did it. I like sharing knowledge, I like the feedback as well. It’s pretty instant feedback when you hear, ‘Oh, I get it.’ You get the feedback, you hear from the kids that you’re making a difference, you see the difference as well, especially with adolescents, where the change over two years is huge. You go from seeing this person who is probably a little immature (although the freshmen here are wildly better prepared for life than some of the other people I’ve come across). But then by the end, they’re really ready to go out into the world a lot of the time, and it’s visible.

Is there a teaching experience that’s stuck out to you?
My baptism of fire, I guess. My first student went to a design block and I was teaching him one on one, and he picked up a saw and carried the saw around school. So that was my very first experience in a high school.

Outside of teaching, how do you like to spend your time?
I still play soccer, although unfortunately unprofessionally, and I had a game over the weekend. I play for a football club called Gambeta and we play every week. Other than soccer, I work part time. At the moment I’m trying to get people into inpatient mental health care sooner, so me and a few people run the MIT Healthcare Hack-a-thon. I would like to pursue that because I really enjoy it. I enjoy the balance of working part time here. I also play the guitar, I’ve done it for 15 years now. I love hanging out with my wife as well, we go to the Cape and I just love being outside on the beach. Even in the cold, just going for a walk along the beach is always nice.