The Puzzle: Blog

At Carney, Sandoe & Associates, we’re fortunate to work with educators every day who are passionate, dedicated, and transformative. This Teacher Appreciation Month, we’re reflecting on the teachers who shaped our own lives. Below, members of our team share stories about the educators who left a lasting impact, reminding us why great teachers matter so deeply. 

Benjamin Bolté, Senior Search Consultant / Practice Leader 

Two standout master’s at The Hill instilled in me many lessons – academically and personally – including how to engage students as a teacher, something I later became, in part because of them. Fritz Mark's insistence on the active voice in writing and the time spent in his study after dinner coaxing energy and meaning from words became a lifelong quest. Bob Iorillo's passion for expanding our frame of reference in order to deepen our understanding not just of Classical and Romantic era texts but of life itself sticks with me to this day and has enriched my own experiences as well as those of my family. Enthusiastic, knowledgeable, and committed teachers indeed become gifts to our worlds.  

Charlotte Brownlee, Consultant 

I have a painting above my desk at home titled, “Afternoon Comes to the Mesa.” It was a high school graduation present from my parents by my most influential high school teacher, Patrick Collins. For the 40 years since, it has followed me everywhere, to dorm rooms, tiny Manhattan apartments, my first home with my husband, until it finally made its way back to that very same Mesa, 22 years later. This homecoming was further completed the following year, when Mr. Collins himself returned to teach on the Mesa, and suddenly I found myself colleagues with my icon.  

I have been staring at that painting for most of my life, and I continue to notice new things in it. The inverted balance of the composition. The days when the actual hills look just like the image. The way the leaves of the eucalyptus appear to move. In Mr. Collins’ art history class, he taught us to pay attention. That there are no right or wrong answers, there are just observations. The act of looking, of noticing, matters in all aspects of life. And through that noticing, your life will be filled with delight, wonder, curiosity, and sometimes yes, sadness and horror.  

In a 2019 Commencement address he advised the graduates:  

“Maps and metaphors, textbooks — even the whopper we read for art history — tell you about where people have been before you, what has already been seen, and what others think it meant. Good to know, but past tense. I wish better for you. I wish you the unexpected. I wish you one lost step after another, taking in the dumbfounding, the particular, the strange, the beautiful, the very real, the literal, the actual.”  

I am grateful to Patrick Collins for giving me a foundational way of looking that has made me appreciate the smallest of beauties in my life. P.S. He and his wife Patricia now live a few miles up the road from me in Maine, and he is painting this new landscape with equal attention.  

Jennifer Wong Christensen, Senior Consultant 

My high school counselor, George Becker, was my first mentor and the person who inspired my professional career. I went to a public school, and Mr. Becker’s caseload included 300-400 students with a wide range of needs and interests. Despite that, he always had time for me and provided steady and kind support. As a teenager, I was usually in an overly dramatic state or an in I-know-everything/nothing stance, and Mr. Becker, with his wry sense of humor, always heard me out, asked good questions, and provided good food for thought. When I started working in schools, he was my inspiration, and I tried to work with and support my students as well as Mr. Becker supported me.  

Lane Dussault, Director of Marketing and Communications  

The most impactful teacher I ever had was Ms. Bailey, who taught me in both second and third grade. Though I was very young at the time, her influence left a lasting mark on me and truly shaped my love of elementary education. Her classroom was a place of creativity, joy, and warmth—filled with imaginative projects, laughter, and a genuine love for learning. Ms. Bailey’s enthusiasm for teaching and her infectious zest for life made school a place I couldn’t wait to be, and I remember thinking even then that I wished every teacher could be just like her. It’s no exaggeration to say that she inspired me to become an elementary school teacher myself; I wanted to give other children the same sense of wonder, encouragement, and belonging that she gave me. 

Skip Kotkins, Senior Consultant 

I started at Lakeside School as a 7th grader, coming from a public elementary school where I had been at the top of the class. Three months into my first year, the then Head of the Lower School, also my Literature teacher, Robert Spock (the brother of the famous baby doctor Benjamin Spock), asked me to see him after school for a moment. 

With fear and trepidation, I went into his office. He sat back in his chair, lit his signature pipe (this was a looooonnng time ago!) and he said to me: “You are my biggest disappointment in the Lower School.” I was dumbfounded because I was not a troublemaker… I was just a normal kid. He went on to say “You can do so much more if you just apply yourself more. You can go home now.” That was it. 

For the rest of my life, as a business leader, as a Board Chair, as a parent, I had learned that it is far more powerful to motivate a person by expressing disappointment than anger or any of a multitude of other methods of expressing disapproval.  The next semester I was on the Gold Star list, the seventh-grade equivalent of the Honor Roll. 

Willy MacMullen, Search Consultant 

As a student at the Taft School in the late 1970’s, I was lucky to have had some amazing teachers—here are two. I loved English and writing, and Robin Blackburn, teacher and department chair, pushed, encouraged and inspired me–and bluntly (and effectively!) course-corrected me when I needed it. She was a fiercely bright, tough, and challenging teacher; she made me a better writer and editor. Tim Briney was my soccer coach and advisor, and he helped a bunch of us who had experienced the tragic loss of a friend and needed support: he was at once tough and demanding and also caring and empathic. We loved and respected him (and at times even feared him a little in a way that’s not a bad thing for a teenager!); we still tell stories about him that are as vivid as yesterday. 

Karen Whitaker, Senior Consultant 

I’d like to pay tribute to Susan Clark, my longtime colleague at Branson, who mentored me as a teacher and a school leader. Brilliant, funny, irreverent, and big-hearted, Susan could offer very direct and tough feedback while simultaneously communicating support, and she worked this magic with students, teachers, and school leaders. Having served as Assistant Head of School before deciding she’d rather be back in the classroom, she had the ability to see complex issues from multiple perspectives, which made her a trusted thought partner across the school. Generous with her time and always rooting for the underdog, she had a constant following of students who made their second homes around her desk in the English office. She was a lifeline through adolescence for many of them.  

She also modeled an openness to change and growth. After leaving administration for the classroom, she taught with School Year Abroad in Spain for a year, then came back to Branson and shifted into college counseling for the last chapter of her career.  Sadly, Susan passed away a little more than a year ago, and all of us who had the good fortune of knowing her feel her loss. I think about her almost every day. 

Jessica Wright, Director of School Services 

As a student, I was solidly middle-of-the-pack—not at the top of the class but consistently doing well and keeping up with my work. In ninth grade, I walked into Mr. Simoes’s English class at my public high school. Early in the fall, he pulled me aside to praise the work I’d been doing. I was surprised and unsure when he suggested I move into an AP English class.  

It was the first time a teacher saw potential in me that I hadn’t yet recognized in myself. His encouragement gave me the confidence to step outside my comfort zone and push myself. I took the leap into the AP course and, in doing so, learned not just more about literature and how to analyze and appreciate the power of stories, but more about who I was and what I can achieve.

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