Down By The River: From Colorado to the Mississippi Delta, A Cultural Adventure in Teaching, Coaching, and Learning

ABOUT THE BOOK: Having graduated from high school in Loveland, Colorado-'America's Sweetheart City'-where he was quarterback and captain of the football team, president of his student body and prom king, Bryce Hach decided that he pretty much had public-school life figured out. Four years later, when he became a high school teacher and football coach deep in the Mississippi Delta, he discovered that he still had a lot to learn ... This is a story about America, public schools, educational challenges, racial issues, poverty-and-wealth and radically differing lifestyles. It's also a story about warmth and friendship and how both the students and (especially) their novice teacher learned something new about each other and life. While a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University, Bryce Hach decided, upon the advice of several professors, to write a memoir based on his experiences in the Mississippi Delta while working in the Teach For America program. This that story. FROM THE BOOK: The school bus was horribly ancient. Holes on the bottom presented the road running under my feet and the bus headlights offered little visual safety after the sun went down. Most driving took place on dusty dirt roads, far from civilization. Our players lived in remote locations that required crossing rickety bridges I thought only existed in children's scary fairy tales. As the bus slowly edged forward across each bridge, I gripped tightly to the steering wheel and my players gripped their seats in case we fell through into the river basin below. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Bryce attended Colorado College in Colorado Springs and then participated in the Teach For American program, working for two years as a high school teacher and football coach in Marks, Mississippi, a small, rural community in the Mississippi Delta.In 2008, Bryce was named as an 40 Under Forty award recipient by the Northern Colorado Business Report as one of the forty top professionals in Northern Colorado. He also received the 'Friend of Science' award by the Colorado Association of Science Teachers. Bryce currently serves as Executive Director of Homeward 2020, a multi-sector driven effort to end homelessness in Fort Collins, Colorado. Bryce and his wife Sarah live with their daughter, Ivy, in Fort Collins, Colorado.