Every teacher has interesting stories and surprising facts about them that most students don’t get a chance to discover. With roughly 300 teachers at ACHS, recognizing a new face among the crowd can be hard, but Minnie Howard’s newest social studies teacher is one you won’t want to miss. Meet Ralph Espach, Oklahoma native, amateur botanist and the most recent addition to the ACHS community.
Born in Oklahoma City on June 6, Espach grew up spending his summers at his fathers cabin in the Snowy Range Mountains of Wyoming. After graduating high school, he attended Columbia University in New York to study political science. After that, he lived in Latin America for a year and eventually, he moved to Washington D.C. to work on Latin American security defense policies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Following his time there, Espach left for graduate school at UC Berkeley, while also continuing his research in political analysis. As part of his research, Espach would end up living in Argentina and Brazil for a considerable amount of time. Eventually, he got married and moved to Seattle, Washington where he taught at Seattle University.
“I always thought I would like to be a professor,” said Espach. “But then I completed graduate school and ended up taking a good job at the Center for Naval Analysis in Arlington, … providing political and security analysis for the U.S. Government.”
After working there for 19 years, he decided to return to teaching. “I always thought [teaching] was an important rewarding career,” said Espach “I was very fortunate to slide into an open position here at ACHS.”
Among his intentions as a teacher, Espach hopes that his students take interest in the material that he teaches and for them and continue that interest even after leaving ACHS.
However, Espach also said that he can find some aspects about being a teacher stressful, such as topics like daily planning, and fitting many activities into one class period.
“I find it stressful to plan the daily lessons and activities because we teachers want to take advantage of every minute to accomplish so many things at once,” he said. “To connect with students and encourage them, to convey information and enthusiasm for the topic, to design and conduct activities for the students so that they can learn actively, and of course to be responsive to anything that comes up – and something always comes up.”
Outside of school, Espach has many other hobbies and interests.
“I love books,” he said. “Especially novels like old spy or detective books or books with an international political edge, like the classics by Graham Greene or John le Carre.” Espach also manages a native plant garden in his front yard and takes interest in music genres such as jazz and rock. During the summer he enjoys reading on his porch and observing the butterflies and bees work over the flowers.
“I’ve always liked the idea of living out in the country, but I don’t really want to,” he said. “I just want to have some of those pleasures here in the city.”
Overall, as a teacher Mr. Espach hopes that he can teach his students important skills for the world that will last with them.
“The guidelines to a peaceful, stable, equitable world are in the study of history, both triumphs and mistakes, and effective governance.” said Espach. “If I can inspire some of my students to be interested in these topics enough to continue to study them, read about them, and think critically about them, after they’ve left ACHS, I would be proud of that.”
