COVID-19 hit everyone hard with quarantining, running out of toilet paper, and having to actually speak to our families. Imagine having to move to a completely different state and switching schools in the midst of all this chaos. Mr. Brewer did not have to imagine this, he lived it.

When Mr. Brewer was at Bolles, from 2013 to 2020, he taught life management during the summer and 9th-grade biology during the school year. He also coached Bolles Boys JV and Varsity basketball.

In March of 2020, quarantine wasn’t yet a national reality but Mr. Brewer’s biology students asked if they were coming back to school after spring break and if they were ever going to see each other again. Mr. Brewer jokingly replied, “you’re probably right, I’m probably not going to see y’all again.”Just a few days later, an email got sent out saying students and faculty would not be returning to school.

Mr. Brewer, who already knew he would not return to Bolles the next year, realized that he truly wouldn’t see his students before he moved. Brewer said,

So, in the midst of the pandemic, Mr. Brewer left Bolles and Jacksonville to move to St. Mark’s School of Texas in Dallas, Texas.

Brewer’s new school is an all-boys first grade through 12th independent school. Brewer said that a single-sex school can be unusual, “The one quirk to this school is you could be walking to say the cafeteria and there would be middle schoolers changing for PE out in the open because it’s all boys, they’ll just yank off their shirts or something.”

Mr. Brewer now also teaches 6th grade Life Science. “I don’t know what I thought 6th grade was going to be like but honestly they are probably some of my favorite students. They are very energetic and always asking questions, stuff that I don’t even know sometimes so I gotta like google it or try to find it and I’m like ‘where did that even come from’.” He adds more details about how fun they are like

Brewer worried that it would be difficult to form bonds with his students and colleagues but the transition has been smooth. “Obviously, the difference now is that I had a lot of close relationships with students, players, and I’m starting to build that now at my new school.”

Mr. Brewer’s “Family”

When Mr. Brewer moved to Texas, he proposed to his real girlfriend. For real this time.

For those who did not have Mr. Brewer as a teacher, he had a family photo sitting on his desk with him, his five kids, and his girlfriend, Rihanna. But the thing about this is that Mr. Brewer doesn’t have any kids, and he’s definitely not dating Rihanna.

Mr. Brewer’s fake family has been a running joke for five years. He even has names for all of them; Riley, Rashad, Reece, River, and the twins Raine and Raina.

Most would think that because he now has a fiance that he would stop the fake family photo. But no, Mr. Brewer still keeps his fake family photo in his office, on a shelf in between photos of him and his real fiance.

When asked how his fiance feels about the fake family photo his response was “both her and my mom tell me ‘you need to let that picture go’, my mom even purposely gave me that picture of me and my fiance to get rid of the family photo and I was like no I’m just going to put it on a different shelf.”

About the St. Mark’s School of Texas

The St Mark’s School of Texas has been around since 1906 and only had 42 students to start out. It is now 2021 and they have more than 900 students.

Like Bolles, it is a college preparatory school, but unlike Bolles, it is an all-boys school. All of their grades are on the same campus, the lower school is just slightly further away. Like how Bolles has their high school and lower school on the same campus but they don’t run into each other.

A quote from David W. Dini, Eugene McDermott Headmaster “Courage and Honor are two words commonly used to describe the ethos of our campus. As the School motto, these terms remind us what values underpin our mission and daily work.”