Known for playing with the cacti in his room and most famous for walking around his classroom barefoot, Mr. Brian Walsh is no unfamiliar character to the Mason community. I knew I had to speak with this man but more importantly, find the roots of such a personality.

The music being played was led by a female voice and almost hypnotized you to sway along with the beat. It was coming from the speakers in a classroom of one Mr. Brian Walsh, a veteran English teacher at George Mason. He then turned to introduce himself and offered me a clementine. Walsh leaned back in his chair with a confident look to his face that could be mistaken for a Roman Caesar receiving news of a victory in a foreign land.

Walsh has been teaching at GMHS for 17 years and currently teaches five classes of ninth and tenth grade English.

“I am sort of like the JV teacher of the English department,” Walsh said.

Walsh first started out as a substitute teacher at GMHS when he moved to NOVA from Boston.

“When the high school and middle school were one building, I was very fortunate to meet

Mr. Ferentinos,” Walsh said. “There was a position in the English department and he recommended me to the principal at the time and she gave me a shot and it worked out.”

Captivated by what he had said, I just had to ask Mr. Ferentinos about it myself.

“They were looking for different teachers and I said ‘why don’t you pick someone who has an English background,’ and he had paid his dues so I recommended him,” said social studies teacher, Mr. Paul Ferentinos.

Walsh’s room is situated in the English hallway right next to fellow English teacher, Ms. Bridget Dean-Pratt, who went to the same high school as Walsh did.

“I didn’t go at the same time during high school with Mr. Walsh… but I find that we have the same sort of classical education in literature and it shows with us both working [at GMHS],” Dean-Pratt said.

Walsh learned many valuable lessons in school; one of them being that high school was not his passion.

“ Speaking of irony, I hated high school. I hated every day of high school and yet here I am every day in high school. he said.

After finishing high school, Walsh went to Boston University and finished with a bachelor’s degree. Then he found a job as a social worker in Boston and later as a teacher at a homeless shelter.

“[As] a social worker, I worked with families and foster kids. It was an interesting job because I was working in impoverished and crime ridden neighborhoods,” Walsh said. “It was [also] interesting because I grew up a white kid in the suburbs and then I was involved in this world that I’d only read about on the front page of the newspapers and then I was right in there for five days a week.”

Walsh taught at a homeless shelter where newly independent convicts and less fortunate people would go to live and get education.

“There was irony everywhere you would look at that job…  I had a view of the Boston skyline and so these people who couldn’t put two nickels together who lived on land that was probably one of the most expensive pieces of land in the Boston area for developers.”

“What I said was ‘we will take it and if you like it and want to keep it then we will get married and I’ll come down in six months. If you don’t like it, you’ll come back and we will get married in six months.’ We were going to get married either way. Obviously she is still here, so I moved. You can’t find a good woman easily. I mean a job is a job, but wives are important,” Walsh said with a wide grin on his face.

When asked about a memorable experience, Walsh replied with a story of his younger days.

“When I was working at the shelter, I used to get a month off and often, I would rent a farmhouse on Martha’s Vineyard and we would fill it with friends. There was this big dining room table and we would have great feasts and we would just eat and celebrate friendship,” Walsh said with smile creeping up from his lips.

When asked to reflect on his life, Walsh went on about wild stories and that was the only conclusion needed. The stories explain themselves and bring out an instrumental personality of George Mason.