Ryan Beck is Alexandria City High School’s newest history teacher. Beck joined ACHS in September to teach U.S. Government and U.S./Virginia History. It has been five months since Beck joined the Titan family and he seems to be adjusting well.
Beck grew up in Syracuse, New York. “I went to a State University of New York, SUNY Cortland, in upstate New York, which was only about an hour from where I grew up. It’s a very unique area that is referred to as the ‘Seven Valley Region’ because it’s all peaks and valleys that were formed by glaciers.”
After studying American History at SUNY Cortland, he decided to continue studying in Virginia. “I did my grad work at the University of Virginia, my grad work dealt with high school administration because I thought at one point that I wanted to be an administrator.”
In high school, Beck participated in many sports. He played lacrosse, soccer, and basketball. Lacrosse has always been his favorite sport, and he has coached it for the past eighteen years. Two teams that he has coached college lacrosse for are Syracuse University and Shenandoah University. This will be the first year that Beck has not been a lacrosse coach but he will still be watching the sport in his free time.
“[Syracuse’s lacrosse] program has won the most Division I national championships out of any other lacrosse program so it was pretty sweet going to those games growing up like right in my backyard. It was awesome actually, my goal for this spring now that I’m not coaching [lacrosse] is to watch over 100 games.” said Beck.
Beck is coming from North Carolina, but has taught in Virginia before. “Last year I worked at a private school in North Carolina called Ravenscroft and it was a complete 180 from this school,” said Beck. “My first three years that I taught, I taught at Justice High School which is in Falls Church, and it used to be called J.E.B. Stuart High School but they changed the name. I spent my career at private schools and part of me really wanted to come back and work at a public school just because the experiences I had working with public school students I enjoyed more.”
He explained that when he first got out of college, he worked for BMW North America, “That [BMW] job actually paid pretty well but I did that for a couple of years and then I realized that it wasn’t really what I went to school for and my real passion is U.S. history, I love it, I’m like ‘why not do something I’m super interested in.’”
Deciding to come back to Virginia was not a hard decision for him, “I don’t think I’ll ever leave the state of Virginia again to be honest with you. I missed it way too much and I moved here in 2007. I’ve lived in Arlington, I’ve lived in Alexandria, I lived in Northwest DC and that was pretty cool to live right in the heart of DC for a couple years, I really enjoyed that.” said Beck.
“[Virginia] has so much to offer [regarding] what I love to do,” he said. “I got really into fly fishing during Covid and there’s some of the best streams here in the state of Virginia for fly fishing and I love to kayak, I love to white water raft, I love to hike and you can drive two hours in any direction here and you can find something like that to do. Not to mention, I love the history of the area, I’m a big civil war buff and I love to travel, go to civil war sites and battlefields and everything of that nature too.”
A big difference between Beck’s old school Ravenscroft, and ACHS, is the fact that he does not have his own classroom here. Currently, he works out of five classrooms and can be seen with a rolling cart that carries student’s papers and his own belongings.
“My classroom last year, one of the walls had a giant world map [on it] and I really miss having that. I mean I literally would use that to point things out to students everyday. I miss having my own classroom where I can decorate and have a ton of pictures, usually I’ll have one of those boards covered with pictures of my experiences and places that I’ve visited so that’s a good opportunity for students to see what life is like for me outside of the classroom” said Beck.
He said, “The thing that I like the best about this school is my students. I really like my students. I think that my [Government classes] have a group of really intelligent, motivated students and my U.S. classes, I really enjoy those.”
Beck has been able to form new friendships with other teachers at ACHS. “My new thing right now is racquetball and I play with one of the science teachers here, we play every Thursday night. It’s a blast, it’s an awesome workout too,” he said. Since ACHS teachers get access to any recreational center for free, Beck makes sure to take advantage of that.
A fun fact about Beck is that he has been to over 100 concerts. “My first show was actually when I was in eighth grade and I saw the Grateful Dead, that was a pretty interesting experience for me.” he said.
Beck has no plans to retire from teaching soon, “I can see myself teaching for another ten years or so and then maybe try to find something else to do. I’d love to be working on a golf course somewhere where it’s warm and close to the water to be honest.”
“From a Government standpoint, I know there’s some really interesting things and some things can be a little bit dry but I’m just trying to do what I can to get young adults that are going to college next year to open their eyes up to how things actually work and how [they] can impact and influence what’s going on in [their] community with [their] voice and vote. It’s a pretty powerful thing to be able to have an impact with your voice and your vote.” he said.
