Fifty six years ago, Upper School Assistant Director of Athletics Mike Brown first stepped on campus. Since then, he’s been a student, teacher, coach, athletic director, and a fixture of the St. Paul Academy and Summit School community. Brown first started out at SPA as a seventh-grade student; at the time, SPA was an all-male military school.
“My first impression of SPA was a very positive one…I was very fascinated with the military, that I would be able to march around and carry a rifle with me during drill period every day,” he said.
After Brown’s junior year, SPA stopped being a military school. He remembers the uniforms changing from military uniforms to clothing better suited for an informal dance.
“[My junior year] was the last year with the Battalion parade, which we held out in the front yard and all the military marched around…[wearing the new uniform] was like going to an informal dance everyday,” he said.
After six years of school at SPA, Brown graduated in 1966 and went off to college. After just a year, he got a part-time job working with an assistant cage manager back at SPA while he was still in college. Over the summer, he worked as part of the maintenance crew, cutting grass and raking leaves at SPA.
Brown applied for some of the open teaching positions at SPA that were being offered, and to his surprise, the principal of the Lower School at the time decided to hire him as a Physical Education teacher.
“The thing that’s interesting about that is that I had never taught physical education before, in my life..So I went back to school and learned about P.E.,” Brown said.
Although it wasn’t what he had expected, Brown enjoyed teaching P.E. After six years, Brown decided that he wanted to do something different, so he went to the Lower School Principal and asked if there were any other jobs for him. After about a week, Brown was offered a job as a second and third grade teacher.
“I remember I said ‘Mr. Shumaker [the Lower School Principal] what do I know about second and third grade teaching?’ and he said ‘you’ll do just fine’…those kids were absolutely a joy. I loved that experience,” he said.
After working as a second and third grade teacher for eight years, Brown switched to teaching fifth and sixth graders. In 1999, a year before the sixth graders were moved to the Randolph Campus, Brown came to teach seventh and eighth graders math for a year and a half.
Around that time, a need for an athletics coordinator arose at the Randolph Campus.
“They wanted to have a middle school athletic coordinator because [the athletics were] all under one umbrella and the program was getting bigger so they asked me to do the middle school athletic coordinating,” Brown said.
However, Brown still hadn’t reached the end of his journey at SPA. A job opening as an athletic director had recently been offered. Later, Brown was asked if he could stay in the position as a co-athletic director. Five years later, he switched jobs again to become an associate athletic director, which is the job that he currently has.
“The best part of my job are the students, that is absolutely why I’ve been here as long as I have…my office is kind of collection of people and the other thing is that I absolutely love athletics and I love to watch kids grow athletically on the fields, but then [also] what can they take from the fields to the classroom,” he said.
Since Brown first came to SPA, the school has changed drastically both in terms of the atmosphere and the education offered.
“The education here has changed and the students are given the opportunity to think for [themselves] as long as [they] defend [their] point of view…It’s a much more gentler place, probably a more human place than it was,” he said.
During his retirement, Brown looks forward to spending time with family and having more time to do the things that he loves. He plans on volunteering and teaching at some point in the future, but is still figuring out what he wants his retirement to look like.
“I’m going to just enjoy looking forward to the next chapter of my life, whatever that’s going to be,” he said.
Brown believes that his career has been “blessed and I don’t know how to say that any differently.” He’s ready for a change, but he’s definitely going to miss SPA.
“There’s so much good that’s here…Leaving that behind is going to be sad, and not seeing kids everyday, I’ll miss that immensely…I’ll definitely miss my teaching colleagues and the coaches that I’ve worked with over the years that are still here…But one has to move on,” he said.