The La Salle science teachers, Kyle Voge, Eric Roth, Amanda Schieber, Jon Owen, Ryan Kain, and Matthew Owen, were all called to science for many different reasons. Their journey to becoming teachers at La Salle was not just based on their passions for science but also their life experiences, which helped them find a new love: teaching. Together, the members of the science department came together to share the multitude of ways in which they discovered their chosen fields and ended up at La Salle.

Kyle Voge

For Mr. Kyle Voge, becoming an educator was initially a far-fetched career path. He instead entered college looking to pursue a career in the sports science field. Mr. Voge received his bachelor’s degree from Oregon State University, after which he secured his master’s degree in biomechanics from the University of Texas.

However, his perspective shifted when he became a teacher’s assistant for a weightlifting class in college. This unearthed his passion for helping others learn.

“I was like, ‘This is great,’” he said. “I get to do stuff that I like, I get to show other people things that are fun, [and] I get to correct and help them learn how to do stuff.”

This experience led Mr. Voge to pursue alternative certification, which allowed him to get teaching credentials without actually completing an education degree. With his credentials in hand, Mr. Voge was able to secure a job straight out of college as a teacher at Akins High School.

Mr. Voge remained in Austin with his wife to begin his teaching career. However, after the birth of their first child, they decided to move back to Portland to receive support from their family. “It was just too hard, having a baby [and] not having the support of family around,” he said. 

Upon searching for a job in Portland, Mr. Voge came across an opening at La Salle. He accepted the position, and decided to try it out for a year to see whether or not it was a good fit. Soon, he found that La Salle was the perfect location for him to continue his teaching career.

Mr. Voge teaches Intro to Computer Science, Computer Science II, and AP Physics at La Salle. He has noticed a unique level of academic commitment from La Salle’s students in particular. “I want to work with people that want to learn and want to be here, and everyone here does,” he said. 

Interacting with students is one of the main reasons Mr. Voge continues to teach. “It’s the energy of dealing with teenagers that is fun,” he said. “It’s fun to expose them to [science] and see when they get excited about it.”

Mr. Voge likes to make connections with students by acting as a big brother of sorts. His goal is to guide students in their learning as opposed to simply treating them “like a product on an assembly line,” he said. When a student has that “ah-ha” moment, that’s when Mr. Voge finds teaching to be truly rewarding.

Eric Roth

For 25 years, Mr. Eric Roth was an environmental engineer until his career path changed completely, and he found himself wanting something new.

Mr. Roth attended Rider University to earn his bachelors in Geology. Prior to college, however, Mr. Roth  had no idea what he wanted to study, and noted that he didn’t find his passion until later in life, as he was in his early twenties when he discovered his interest. “I’m a late bloomer,” he said. Previously, he had enjoyed the arts and athletics more. 

After attending Rider University, Mr. Roth attended Michigan State for his masters degree in Geology. For 25 years after, he was an environmental engineer until one day, he wanted to take a new path with his career, and made the decision to become a teacher. 

Though this decision didn’t materialize until later in his life, teaching wasn’t a foreign concept for Mr. Roth. In graduate school, Mr. Roth was a teacher’s assistant and he loved this role, as he realized that he could give back to people through educating. Additionally, Mr. Roth’s father had experience teaching at a university. “It was kind of in my blood,” he said.

In light of this, Mr. Roth attended Lewis and Clark College to get his teaching degree, and has been teaching at La Salle ever since. 

Mr. Roth teaches Geology and Chemistry at La Salle, and finds his favorite part of teaching is the students. For him, making connections with the students is important. “I like the interaction with kids; it really makes the whole thing worthwhile,” Mr. Roth said. In fact, being around young people was a key reason regarding why he made his career transition in the first place. “[It was] just a fun change, to change it up from dealing with lawyers and engineers all day long to 17-year-olds,” he said. 

Mr. Roth loves La Salle because of the community. He likes that the students take pride in their work and care about the work they create. In addition, he admires that the parents and teachers are thoroughly invested in the students’ well-being. “There’s a lot of people [that] put their best selves forward. I like that,” he said. 

Mr. Roth believes that it is important for his classes to be engaging and fun, and ensures that the students get a lot of hands-on learning opportunities, such as labs and going on hikes. “I try to make [geology] a class that’s engaging and you kind of get out of it what you put into it,” Mr. Roth said, describing it as “an entry-level geology class for the appreciation of the physical geology of Oregon.”

Amanda Schieber

Ms. Amanda Schieber graduated from Clackamas High School as one of her school’s valedictorians. After attending Clackamas, she enrolled in Willamette University and obtained her degree in Biology. 

Following college, Ms. Scheiber was an English tutor while she was living in Japan. Through this job, it became clear that teaching was something she was destined to do.

Ms. Schieber loves biology because of the fact that it is the science of life. “There’s so much going on inside us that we don’t even know that we take it for granted [and] when you figure out how it all works, it’s just so amazing that all these processes and cells have different parts working together and you don’t even have to think about it,” Ms. Schieber said. 

After returning from Japan, she went back to Willamette University to obtain her teaching degree, and then spent a year as a substitute for schools in the North Clackamas School District. This is how she found her way to teaching at La Salle.

While substituting, Ms. Schieber always looked forward to subbing at La Salle. “I felt like I always looked forward to it when I was going to substitute here because it just seemed like such a better environment, and I thought, ‘Yeah, I’d like to be a part of that,’” Ms. Schieber said. 

Compared to the schools that Ms. Schieber had taught at before, La Salle felt like just the right fit for her. 

Ms. Schieber finds that the community at La Salle is her favorite part of the school. She loves that the teachers at the school can connect with each other, and at other schools she substituted for Ms. Schieber never really felt like this was the case. 

Additionally, she found her initial draw to La Salle was also due in part to the students in the community. “Generally, I think the students here are pretty nice,” she said. 

Teaching at La Salle helped her realize what she loves about educating. “I like that everyday is a little different” said Ms. Schieber, “It’s not like you come to an office and you do the same thing everyday; there’s always new challenges.” 

Jon Owen

Fresh out of college, Mr. Jon Owen found a teaching job at La Salle after attending Seattle Pacific University. 

After getting his degree in physics, Mr. Owen started at La Salle as the new Physics and Mathematical Physics teacher. Getting to La Salle, however, was a venturesome decision for him. 

In college, Mr. Owen was a teacher’s assistant and led study groups for his classmates. When hearing that La Salle had an opening for a physics teacher, it led him to consider the possibility of becoming a teacher.

Mr. Owen was inspired to become a physics teacher by his own high school experience. While attending high school in Valrico, Florida, Mr. Owen did not particularly enjoy his physics class, and wanted to embrace the opportunity to provide students with a different experience than his own. 

With the goal of “being able to be a good physics teacher for somebody and maybe get someone interested in physics that wouldn’t have been interested” in mind, Mr. Owen decided he wanted to try teaching and took the job at La Salle. Though it wasn’t something he had always planned on doing, he didn’t want to let the opportunity that had opened up pass him by. “I did some teaching in college, but it was like, ‘Hey, let’s see if I actually like this,’” he said.

Mr. Owen’s favorite part of La Salle is the tight knit community, and he likes that he is able to create close connections with everyone at the school. 

While having these close relationships with students he is able to share his knowledge and help them learn through projects. Mr. Owen finds that projects are one of his favorite ways to teach students new information. “I think it’s more fun to make something with your hands than to just do a poster,” he said.

One project that he is excited for is the creation of a musical instrument. This project consists of students creating their own instrument to demonstrate sound waves. 

Mr. Owen expresses his love for physics not just through projects, but through the application of mathematics. For him, he enjoys the calculations that answer the “what if” questions in physics. 

“I think it’s really cool how you can take something that you can see happen and model that through math,” he said, posing an example of a car taking a tight turn on a road and measuring how heavy the car has to be in order to not tip over as one of the many of the real world applications that are dealt with through physics. 

Though he hasn’t ruled out the possibility of going back to school to get a PhD or masters degree, Mr. Owen is happy with his decision to come teach physics at La Salle. “There’s nothing that I’m like, ‘I wish I had done that instead,’” he said. 

Ryan Kain

Like many others, Mr. Ryan Kain’s favorite part about La Salle is the community. “These are my people,” Mr. Kain said.

Mr. Kain graduated from La Salle in 2011, and during his time here he made many relationships with people that are still here today. For example, he finds himself working alongside teachers that were his friends in high school, teaching students that he babysat as a high-schooler, and working with teachers that taught him. 

One of these teachers that he currently works with is Ms. Carie Coleman, the Innovation and Design teacher. In high school, Ms. Coleman was his Biology teacher and he credits her for his decision to major in biology and dedicate his career to it. 

Mr. Kain attended University of Portland for his degree in biology and his teaching degree. At first he was intending to go into the medical field, and was enrolled in all of the required pre-med classes. However, the focal point of his education quickly changed with one presentation. 

In college, he was dragged to a meeting from the organization Pacific Alliance for Catholic Education (PACE). Despite not initially wanting to attend the meeting, it made him completely rethink the course of his life, and after some reflection, he realized that education aligned with his values. “Most of the events in life that I enjoyed the most — that brought me the most, one, literal joy, and two, made me feel fulfilled — were the ones that I was quote unquote teaching,” he said. 

“I wanted to be in a job where I work with people and can help people,” Mr. Kain said. In addition, he realized how much he loved research, and how much he wanted to talk about research with other people. Through teaching, he could do that. 

Now at La Salle, he teaches Honors Biology, Anatomy & Physiology, and Marine Biology. He now knows what his favorite things about teaching are: the unpredictability and the relationships.

Mr. Kain loves how everyday is different. He believes that if he had an office job everyday, he would get bored of it because of the repetition. “I love the fact that it’s unpredictable,” Mr. Kain said. 

In addition, he is very passionate about both anatomy and biology. “I love the living world. I love the nuance and complexity and just the fact that everything happens for a reason,” he said. Having experience with both biology and pre-med tracks, he feels at home in the realm of teaching biology and anatomy, specifically in regards to the science of the human body. “That was my world. I know a lot about it,” he said.

As well as liking the difference in day-to-day activities and the subject matter of his classes, Mr. Kain also enjoys the relationships with students. He likes the ability to connect with students about different aspects of science.

“I love teaching students. I love working with the humans that I work with. I like not sitting at a desk and using a computer,” Mr. Kain said.

Matthew Owen

At La Salle, Mr. Matthew Owen’s central area of focus is chemistry, where he teaches Chemistry, Honors Chemistry, and AP Chemistry. Through his love for the subject, he feels he can help others achieve this same love. 

For Mr. Owen, getting students truly interested and engaged in chemistry is vital to his approach to teaching. He loves to do demonstrations for his classes and encourage the students to come up with their own hypotheses.

“I think that that is one of the best ways to build engagement and get students to ask questions and allow for the development of hypotheses that yes, might be incorrect, but that’s how we’re going to learn,” Mr. Owen said.

After moving to the United States from the United Kingdom at a young age, Mr. Owen first attended St. Ignatius for elementary and middle school, then joined La Salle’s community and graduated in 2010. He believes that being an alumni at La Salle is valuable to help students at the school as it allows him to understand the “ins and outs” of being a student at La Salle and connect with the students in a different way than other teachers. 

Before Mr. Owen found his way back to La Salle, he attended Gonzaga University, where he received his degree in chemistry and first discovered his passion for it. 

For around two-and-a-half years, Mr. Owen spent his time in the university lab, doing chemistry labs he didn’t truly understand. This caused him to lose interest in chemistry for a brief period. “I had just kind of fallen out of love with it,” Mr. Owen said. 

That was until he started tutoring student athletes his senior year of college. While tutoring, he realized what he wanted to do: teaching. 

“I thought this could be something that I make a career out of,” Mr. Owen said.

After graduating from Gonzaga, Mr. Owen received a call from a familiar place: La Salle. An opening had emerged in the science department — a position that seemed to be perfectly suited for Mr. Owen. He was offered a job as a chemistry teacher, and after some convincing from the principal at the time, he decided to go through with the interview, and he ended up getting the job. 

Through working at La Salle, Mr. Owen realized what he loves most about teaching. He discovered that his love of teaching grew in unison with his love for helping others. He prides himself heavily on guiding students so they understand content. 

“It’s definitely a hard subject, [chemistry], but trying to help folks recognize that this is content that they are able to learn is really important to me,” Mr. Owen said.