Bobcat Stories

It has taken 20 years, but walking back on Bosque School campus feels nearly as magical as it did when I arrived here as a sixth grader in 2002. My name is Brynne Jojola Mount, class of 2009, and I am joining the Bosque School faculty as an upper school physics teacher. More than anything, I am surprised to be back; this is never a position I thought I would dream of and pray for, let alone upheave my entire life to accept. I am amazed at the changes our school has undergone, the maturity it has gained, and the beauty it continues to emanate. If you have not been back to campus since graduation, I suggest coming by, if nothing else to remember how gorgeous this space is.

After leaving Bosque, I obtained an undergraduate degree in biological anthropology. I got married, moved to Kansas with my husband who is in the Air Force, and very quickly had my amazing son. I love infectious diseases, epidemiology, and statistics, and was able to combine this love with my innate passion for writing during my graduate school years. I completed a master’s in public health while in Kansas and pregnant with my daughter. I also capitalized on my background as a weightlifter and worked as a personal trainer and CrossFit coach during this time. On graduating and welcoming my daughter, I worked briefly with a public health department as a member of a COVID-19 unit but, as my husband prepared for a military rotation to Europe, I needed to find a job closer to home. A seventh-grade life science position was open at a local middle school and the principal took a chance and hired me. It was the best change of fate imaginable.

I worked with my middle schoolers in Kansas for a year before my husband’s job took us to the El Paso, Texas area, and I began working at Santa Teresa High School in southern New Mexico as a physics teacher. While the subject was wildly outside my typical skillset, I fell in love with the hands-on nature of the field. I took what I remembered from phenomenal Bosque School teachers like Jim Daly, Dan Shaw, Sheri Mahoney, and Tom Allen, to build a physics curriculum that helped my students rediscover the fun of science. In the following years, I taught a myriad of subjects at Santa Teresa and deepened my love of secondary education. It was the best job in the world, until I, by pure chance, checked the Bosque School website and saw an ad for a science teacher.

Applying to teach science at Bosque was nearly as involved as applying for admission in fifth grade. It was long and arduous, but I knew when I came on campus to interview and give a demo lesson that this was the job I wanted above all others. Bosque is still actively becoming a better place, still striving to fulfill all its potential and ambitions. But so many of the things people of the early years wished to see on campus — the more unapologetically Bosque-ness of it — are proudly on display here now. Bosque School is becoming the place we wanted it to be as angsty teens, and it is a beautiful, amazing thing to have become a part of.