Walter Levis is a journalist, writer and teacher at Fieldston Upper School. His first job was as a journalist and in 2007, he began teaching part-time at Fieldston.\u00a0 All those who have taken class with Mr. Levis admire his enthusiasm for teaching and his encouragement to his students to question the surrounding world.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During his time as a journalist, Mr. Levis covered crime in upstate New York. Early on in his career he \u201csaw a lot of upsetting things.\u201d After interviewing a distraught mother whose son had been murdered, his waning interest in journalism finally came to an end. Realizing he no longer wanted to pursue journalism, Mr. Levis turned to ghostwriting. A ghostwriter is hired to do the writing that is credited to another person. Soon after, he heard about a part time teaching job at Fieldston. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Through his wife, Mr. Levis found a job at Fieldston.\u00a0 She used to work in the Upper School and told him of an open part time job in the ethics department.\u00a0 He took it and has never looked back since.\u00a0 Also, Mr. Levis\u2019 daughter attended Fieldston from pre-k through twelfth grade. Mr. Levis stated, \u201cI have always been part time but my heart is in the school in a deep way.\u00a0 My wife worked at the school for many years and my daughter went through the school.\u201d While she attended Fieldston, Mr. Levis\u2019 daughter was a \u201cbig athlete,\u201d and when he went to her games, Mr. Levis would practice the guitar while he watched. Aside from volunteering, playing music and of course being a Michael Sandel lookalike (a running joke in many of Mr. Levis\u2019 ethics classes), he also played low level professional tennis in his 20s.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When asked about his favorite aspects of teaching, Mr. Levis compared it to journalism.\u00a0 Mr. Levis explained, \u201cThe similarity between journalism and teaching is inquiry, you have to be willing to ask good questions of people you don\u2019t really know.\u201d He continued, \u201cI hope that I am inspiring students to question their assumptions. We all bring our whole selves into the classroom so I would hope that a student isn\u2019t trying to figure out what I want to hear. I hope that my personal biases aren\u2019t the point. The point is to think critically about all of [the material] and about ourselves.\u201d Mr. Levis also said one of the things he loves about teaching is that it\u2019s about the curiosity and, \u201ctaking the world in as a question.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In his free time, Mr. Levis loves to play music. \u201cThe great joy of my life, that many people don\u2019t know, is that I play music in nursing homes and hospitals,\u201d said Mr. Levis. He works with an organization called Musicians On Call. He loves to \u201cgo into unusual places and play music.\u201d Mr. Levis comes from a musical family. His mother was a music teacher and she inspired him to start playing music. He enjoys playing the guitar and singing. One of his favorite songs to play is \u201c<\/em>Fly Me to the Moon,\u201d by Frank Sinatra. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In response to asking what his favorite class to teach is, Mr. Levis said \u201cI don\u2019t have a real favorite in that way. But what I could say at this stage of my career is that I feel very lucky that I get to teach two electives that are close to my heart. One of them is ethical issues in sports.\u00a0 The goal of the class is to get students thinking critically about something they already like.\u201d Mr. Levis\u2019 love of athletics and ethics merge together in this elective, which he teaches alongside money and morals.\u00a0 Talking about his money and morals class, Mr. Levis said \u201cWe\u2019re not keeping it real if we don\u2019t acknowledge our range of wealth at the Fieldston School. Maturity is appreciating more and more complexity. I\u2019m after helping people appreciate the complexity. In this class, we ask some difficult questions about how money fits into life.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Levis has countless experiences from the real world.\u00a0 He uses each of them in his classroom.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s about being able to teach those classes that I feel connected to,\u201d said Mr. Levis.\u00a0 Mr. Levis\u2019 personal views on his curriculum are not the point, something he greatly stressed,\u201cI would hope that my personal biases aren\u2019t the point. The point is to think critically about all of it, about ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Levis is a one of a kind teacher. His numerous career experiences are priceless and teaching ethics at Fieldston is only one of Mr. Levis\u2019 many passions. From journalism to teaching, he has always been doing something he loves and his passion is inspirational and rare. Part of what makes Mr. Levis so special, is his connection to Fieldston. Fieldston is a huge part of not only his life but his family\u2019s life too. His connection to the school makes him care even more about his students. As he continues to teach, he hopes students will learn from him and always question the world around them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Walter Levis is a journalist, writer and teacher at Fieldston Upper School. His first job was as a journalist and in 2007, he began teaching part-time at Fieldston.\u00a0 All those who have taken class with Mr. Levis admire his enthusiasm for teaching and his encouragement to his students to question the surrounding world.\u00a0 During his time as a journalist, Mr. Levis covered crime in upstate New York. Early on in his career he \u201csaw a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":345,"featured_media":7621,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[347,426,322,318,425],"tags":[135,528],"coauthors":[498,500],"class_list":["post-7604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-faculty","category-featured","category-news","category-spotlight","tag-fieldston","tag-teacherfeature"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/wally-e1529503262444.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/345"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7604"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7624,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7604\/revisions\/7624"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7604"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}