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TEACHING
ma t t e rs
Geoffrey Marchant P’93,’07: Retiring, but still
ready ‘to smite the sounding furrows’ (Tennyson) B Y
H E N R Y
F
M C N U L T Y
For English instructor Geoffrey Marchant,
“Mr. Marchant is the only teacher I know who calls his students’ attention to the view outside the window,” says Mary Claire Brunelli ’08. “He welcomes students to join him in his woodland hobbies, such as building bridges over swamps, splitting logs, checking up on the bluebird houses, seeking out fringed gentians, and participating in the maple syrup process.” Adds Luke Flinn ’06: “I remember when Mr. Marchant threw batting practice, one day I hit the maple syrup jug he used as a water bottle. ‘Water jug bonus!’ he shouted, and I got five more pitches. The day before our next game, I found the dented maple syrup jug in my mailbox, with a note that read, ‘Now do it when it counts.’” Teacher, soccer and baseball coach, maple syrup maker, marathon runner, parent, tree surgeon, Ernie Banks fanatic – Geoff Marchant, it seems, has done it all in his 41 years at Hotchkiss. Yet he didn’t originally plan on becoming a teacher. Born in Evanston, Illinois, Geoff attended Evanston High School. His success there earned him admission to Princeton, where he majored in English. “They were looking for public school kids,” he modestly suggests. Geoff was a goalie on the university’s soccer team all four years and in his spare time coached Little League in the town.
PHOTO: ANNE DAY, P'09,'11,'13
almost anything that happens can be a teaching moment.
A Fish out of Water Cameron Smith ’68 became his close friend at Princeton. “He asked me if I was interested in teaching, and my answer was no,” Geoff recalls. “But in senior year, I was interested. I took a teaching seminar and taught in [Princeton] at a middle school. Cameron said there was a job opening at Hotchkiss. I came up to interview and eventually was
offered the job.” He also married his childhood sweetheart, Kathy Ward. “I did it all in two months,” Geoff says. “Went from single student to married teacher.” When he first arrived, he hardly knew what a boarding school was. “I was a fish out of water,” he smiles. “I got here and took my first schedule out of the mailbox, and said S p r i n g
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