“I love being here at Mason, I love teaching here… I enjoy the faculty, the families, having lunch in my room… I like the community aspect,” GM science teach Mark Sokolowksi said.

Sokolowski has been at Mason for an entire decade, teaching seven different courses including eighth grade physical science, regular and honors chemistry, and regular, IB SL, and IB HL physics. Though he has traded off chemistry and physical science over the years, physics has been his main course to teach, as he majored in physics. He received his Bachelor’s in physics from Le Moyne College, and his Masters in Education from the University of Virginia.

He and his family are moving down to a farm in Fort Defiance, Virginia that has been in his wife’s family for over 100 years. They are going down to help Sokolowski’s mother-in-law, who at the moment is handling the 300 acre farm by herself.

“It will be nice for the boys (Sokolowski’s two young sons) to be near Nanna and to run around outside,” Sokolowski said.

In addition to helping out on the farm and parenting two young boys, Sokolowski and his wife both have found jobs teaching at two different schools around the Harrisonburg area. He will be teaching eighth grade science, a stepping stone to his ideal job of teaching high school science there.

Though his family seems ready for the move, he did leave us with heartfelt parting words: “This school and this town are really special places, and it’s hard to appreciate something like that until you step out of it when you are here. You walk away, and you don’t know how good you had it… Never leave!” Sokolowski said.