SLIVER STARS

CHET CHILDRESS COLLEGE COUNSELOR

Anative Richmonder, Chet Childress grew up playing in corn and soybean fields in Hanover County that are now giant subdivisions and shopping centers. “I enjoyed ‘country living’ as a kid, but I’m definitely more of a city person,” he says, noting that New York and London are two of his favorite travel destinations. Sometimes he will take a day trip to New York just to see some theatre, listing “Something’s Rotten, War Horse, Jersey Boys, and of course, Hamilton” as his top shows.

Before discovering Trinity in 1995, Childress taught English as an adjunct professor at both the University of Richmond and VCU. “The people were very friendly,” Childress recalls of his introduction to teaching at Trinity, teaching 9th grade English and creative writing. “Lynne Tulou, the English dept chair, really took me under her wing,” Childress recalls. “The transition from teaching college freshmen to high school freshmen was a big one. She was there to help me and reassure me that everything I was doing was okay.” His favorite subjects to teach? “Shakespeare, especially the sonnets.” Favorite plays? “As You Like It,” “King Lear,” and “Macbeth.” Childress also enjoyed teaching non-fiction, including literary essays, news writing and advertising copywriting.

Carrie Belt Rogers ’00 was one of Childress’s earliest students and went on to a career as a freelance writer. “I think about the grammar and syntax lessons I learned from Mr. Childress nearly daily and credit those lessons with my success as a business and marketing writer,” she says. “He is absolutely the best English teacher on the planet (hyperbole, but true).” Childress says Trinity has helped him grow personally and professionally. “I’ve had so many opportunities to do new and different things I would not have otherwise,” he says. Working closely with former English teacher Katie Best, the pair designed a program called English Studies, which looked where incoming students were developmentally and taught courses to try to catch everyone up.

“I like being involved in a school that is all about saying yes,” he says.” When he had the idea to revive the journalism program, he approached then-Head of School Tom Aycock with a wish list of computers and software “I thought, what the heck, I’m gonna ask for the world,” says Childress, “and, well — he delivered everything.” Cranking out issues of the Synecdoche student news magazine and recalls working closely with student editors like Mark Hiner ’00, Jack Mooney ’02 and Catherine Seward Allison ’01. “It was fun because when you work with kids in a smaller group that way, you get to know them.”

The rapport he built over years with small groups of budding writers was an ideal springboard to the next chapter of Childress’s tenure at Trinity: college guidance. “As a college counselor, I still ‘teach’ writing, helping students write their college essays,” he says. Now in his 14th year as a college counselor, Childress is perhaps best known to both students and employers all over greater RVA as the coordinator of “Junior Work Week.” Grounded in a career counseling theory, the program gives students a better understanding of who they are, what they like, what their interests by partnering them with a host employer for a week in March.

“Countless times, employers will email or call me back and say, ‘you know, I was a little reluctant to take on a high school student, but your student was better prepared than a lot of the college interns I take,’” he says with pride.

Childress says he hopes students will appreciate him as dedicated, committed, supportive and a good listener. With so much of his work devoted to preparing students for the future, he appreciates when students return to Trinity years later. “As educators, we don’t often get to see what happens [to students] afterwards; we are all works in progress,” he says. “But for someone to come back and say, ‘hey I’m doing great and I really appreciate what you did for me,’ those are the memories that teachers hold onto. They really are special.”