Brian O’Leary

There are a lot of good teachers here. And I think one of the things Goshen Community Schools does so well is giving them freedom to do the things teachers do really well. I think the people in Goshen Community Schools make it really good. You have a lot of people who know so much of what they’re doing and can bring so much to the table.

I’m an English teacher at Goshen High School. This is my first year. I’m also the goalkeeper coach for the boys soccer team at Bethany Christian.

I came here as a Goshen College student in 2009. Then I graduated from Goshen College and left. I did a little tour of the Midwest, went to Madison, Wis., and Iowa City, then came back to do seminary at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. My wife Katie is a Goshen native. She and I were dating this whole time, so we both moved back to Goshen at the same time and then got married.

I started helping out here when Katie got a job at Goshen High School as choir director. This musical is the fourth one that I’ve been involved working with on the set. I started helping on the set with ‘Camelot,’ and then ‘Tarzan’ and ‘Annie’ and now ‘Big Fish.’

I did musicals in high school; I’m not from the area. This is so much more than anything I’d ever been a part of before. This is a real production. There are so many different people involved with different areas of expertise about different things with costumes and set dressings and construction and with acting and singing. To see the way that all comes together to create something this big and this really, truly fantastic…it’s kind of amazing what high schoolers can do when they have this level of support and are given that level of freedom to perform.

I grew up in a large city, but I’ve never felt like there wasn’t anything going on in Goshen. I think that’s really special.