Nowell Hesse

Meet the New Head of High School: Nowell Hesse

by Editorial Staff
Ensights editors sat down and asked Nowell Hesse a few questions so that the community could get to know him better.

What inspired you to pursue teaching/coaching as a profession?

In truth, I originally approached teaching as “taking a break” between my time at UGA and my intended matriculation to medical school. I thought I would teach and coach for a year (maybe two), then return to my own education and a career I had spent much of my undergraduate years preparing for. Little did I know that I would become hooked on helping others learn and grow into better people. My time on this side of the desk in the classroom and on this side of the whistle on the field showed me that education is the most important thing I could do in my life.

What attracted you to working at Ensworth?

I became aware of Ensworth while attending graduate school at Vanderbilt. David Braemer gave our group a tour of the High School Campus, and I was immediately impressed with both the scale of the place and the thoughtfulness with which it had been designed. I learned a bit about the school’s reputation from my local Vandy peers, and all available evidence suggested it was a great school that would only get better with time.
When I began to explore opportunities outside of New Orleans, the Ensworth job immediately jumped to the top of my list. Having spent time in Nashville, and considering my wife and I wanted to be at a school that all of our children could attend in the near future, Ensworth’s reputation for excellence and the opportunity to work with David Braemer in a leadership role sealed the deal.

In what ways have you used experiential learning/hands-on projects in your classroom to enhance the learning experience?

During my first year of teaching physics, I employed a very “direct” instructional approach. It worked for many students, but not for all. I began to shift my approach to more of an inquiry-based, hands-on pedagogy during the latter half of my second year, and I had fully adopted this experiential philosophy by the end of my third year. The deep learning that results when students gather data during experiments they designed and then analyze that data to arrive at basic physics principles is compelling, and in my experience, ultimately more effective than any lecture I could give on the same material.

What have you seen in Ensworth that makes it unique/different?

Ensworth’s high school is very young, both in comparison to the rest of the school and in comparison to other similar schools around the country. I have not encountered another high school that has achieved such success in such a short amount of time, and I credit David Morgan and the team he helped assemble to launch the high school. I have been amazed by the thoroughness and depth to which the high school program was thought out in advance.

What is a memorable moment/favorite memory in your career in education?

For about twenty years at my previous school, we talked as a science faculty about the need for a new building that would support the kind of experiences we wanted to provide our students. We did not have adequate lab space or equipment to run the kinds of experiments, activities, or long-term research projects that would give our students deep insights into the basic sciences or allow them to push into advanced topics they wanted to explore. I remember how excited I was when the board approved the project a few years ago, an excitement that built with each completed phase of the project. I will never forget walking through the completed building and seeing students learning in the state-of-the-art classrooms for the first time.

What is your favorite aspect of your job as an educator/administrator?

My office sits at the intersection of students, teachers, parents, and administrators. I love working with all of those constituencies to improve the overall student experience and help each individual student grow into the best version of his/her self. The division head role is both rewarding and challenging, and I continue to grow personally from my work every day.

List 3-5 fun facts about yourself that people might not know.

  • I am a HUGE New Orleans Saints fan.
  • I love to fish, and I particularly love to go fly fishing with my father.
  • I enjoy making furniture for my children’s bedrooms.
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