Mathias Sagartz: Coming Back, Still Learning

Mathias Sagartz knows what it feels like to fall behind.

Long before he became a science teacher at Northpoint Charter School, he was a student there himself. Keeping up with classwork wasn’t always easy, but his path through high school also gave him an unusual opportunity: he began taking college courses through dual enrollment.

By the time he moved on, Mathias already had two years of college under his belt. That helped him eventually transfer to the University of New Mexico and continue figuring out what he wanted to do.

Teaching science wasn’t the original plan. In fact, teaching in New Mexico wasn’t the original plan, either.

At one point, Mathias imagined teaching English in Japan. His direction shifted toward math, then teacher education. After graduating, he began interviewing at schools around the area. Somewhere in the middle of that process, he started thinking about his own high school.

“I got to wondering how my old school was doing,” he says.

So he reached out.

Nine years later, Mathias is still here.

He began as a math teacher before adding science to his teaching credentials. For the past six years, he has taught science—a role that continues to stretch him. At a small school, that means teaching many different kinds of science rather than settling into one specialty.

“I’m still in the middle of it, learning,” he says. “It’s always a lot of fun.”

That willingness to keep learning is also part of what Mathias values about the school he returned to. Teachers don’t simply close their doors and focus on their own classes. They share ideas, help students across subjects, and talk with one another about what students need.

“We share everything,” he says. “It’s a group thing. It’s collaborative.”

For Mathias, that makes teaching less of a solo performance and more of an ongoing conversation—with colleagues, with students, and perhaps even with the student he used to be.

His path has changed directions more than once. Nine years into teaching, it still isn’t finished changing.

And Mathias seems perfectly comfortable with that.