Everyone can remember the moment they found out there is no set game plan to becoming a successful adult, and helping his students reach that point has consistently been Bryan Koster’s most treasured part of his tenure within the Roaring Fork School District. 

“I think a lot of times they have this perception that there’s a formula to becoming an adult,” he said. “If I do x, y and z, then my life is going to take off and be set and I’ll be ‘successful.’ It wasn’t until my mid-20s that I knew I wanted to try teaching, and even then, it was a leap of faith.”

Koster, who has been teaching English in RFSD since 2000, announced that he will retire his infamous red pen and worn out projector at the end of the 2024-25 school year in search of a new way to “train his mental muscles in other areas.”

“I’m not disillusioned or burnt out,” Koster explained. “I feel like I need a change. I need a different focus. I feel like I’ve done good work, and it’s just time for me to move on and spend my time on other pursuits.”

Koster, a New Jersey native, didn’t grow up dreaming of spending time with chalk lodged underneath his fingernails, rather wanting to help others, and make his own subjective difference in the world. 

After receiving an BA from Tufts University, Koster journeyed west of the Mississippi for the first time. Through the AmeriCorps, an independent government agency that helps supply anything from volunteer disaster relief to mentorship, Koster was sent to San Diego to help provide a safe space and healthy alternative after school activities for the inner city youth. 

“That’s how I got interested in education in the first place,” he said. “Working with kids in San Diego, not teaching at all, but just running after-school programs.”

He said that after feeling that spark, he fell into a sequence of part-time jobs that are now being relegated to AI. 

“After a string of part time jobs that I absolutely did not care about, that’s when I decided I needed a focus, I needed to find a so-called career. So I applied to a couple of different graduate programs, got accepted into the education program at CU Boulder, and decided to go all in for that.”

The CU Boulder Graduate School alumni was first introduced to RFSD at a job fair on the Front Range in 2000. He worked for one year as a seventh grade social studies teacher at Glenwood Springs Middle School before taking an English teaching role at Basalt High School. He was a Longhorn for 11 years before taking his talents elsewhere. He started working at Glenwood Springs High School in 2012 and will ride off into the sunset after the 24-25 school year closes. 

“I think it’s good to shake things up every once in a while,” he said. “That was one of the reasons I switched from Basalt to Glenwood mid-career. There was no ‘real’ reason for me to move. I just felt it was time, I was a little too comfortable. I feel like I’m at that point now where I just need to reinvigorate to carry me through whatever X amount of years are still to come.”

Koster said he purposefully hasn’t set out to find an immediate next step. He has been mulling over many different options in his head from taking the next step in education, and working with CMC, to potentially finding something away from teaching. 

“I’ve deliberately been keeping (my options) open,” he said. “My wife is very supportive, and financially, we’re in a good place, so I really am just concentrating on finishing the year strong, maintaining integrity and making sure that I’m still doing the job as well as I can. But, I’m certainly not done working. I’m not retiring in the sense that I am going to just be sitting at home.”

Although Koster isn’t sure what the future will hold in terms of his professional career, he said he couldn’t picture finding another role that would provide a similar sense of fulfillment. 

“I get great satisfaction from teaching,” he said. “I think it’s a very important thing to do. I think it contributes a lot of good to the world, and of course I do it for the money as much as anyone else, but to me, it’s more than a paycheck.”

He said that although he may not find that same amount of gratification from his next job, there are too many things out in the world. 

“I can’t anticipate whatever I do next will have that same level of value or satisfaction, but I spent a good part of my life doing it already. So I have a certain measure of peace in that sense.”