Ethan Vlah, After School Care Program

Ethan has studied the performing arts and language since age 12 and as an adult became completely fascinated by their global ubiquity. At Ohio University, he combined his practical studies of the fine arts (music, dance and theater) with anthropology into a self-directed program of study at a school with no existing degree in cross-cultural artistic studies. After college he devoted himself to social and environmental activism and an in-depth study of music from around the world. In Rhode Island, he helped create a youth arts program at AS220, a nationally recognized arts collective, that brought together kids from private, public and prison schools, and met his first music mentor, R.A. Fish. At 25, Ethan moved overseas. Over the course of the next 7 years in Slovenia, Spain, India, and later St. Croix, he studied and performed Indian, Arabic, Balkan, Flamenco, West African, Brazilian, Afro-Caribbean and American music, while learning both Spanish and the core mechanics of English while working as an ESL teacher.

Ethan is deeply grateful to have been introduced to the art of teaching at his high school, Hawken School, whose tight knit community of educators and students demanded an academic rigor that surpassed that of his first year of college. He began working as a classroom teacher when he was 21, through an Americorps environmental program which combined public outreach and community organizing into its educational goals. The connectedness of education to community left its mark and has informed everything he has done as an educator since, from private music tuition to group ESL classes in Austin. To this point, most of his training in education has come from on-the-job experience and self-directed study. He moved to Austin in 2008 because of its rich cultural diversity, musical heritage and the wealth of progressive educational, business and social service entities. Ethan believes strongly in the re-imagining and reforms of education that are transpiring in America and globally, especially those that bring together families from disparate socio-economic backgrounds.