For Chad Neri, Morgan’s Engineering teacher, the path to teaching was a bit atypical. While his journey at Morgan first started in 2012 when he was here as a student, 9 years later, he returned, as a sub, while he was looking for a job. However, it wasn’t until he quit in 2023 to work at Bausch, that he got the call to return as Morgan’s Engineering teacher.

Neri’s journey to being a teacher started in high school. Although Neri wished that he took high school more seriously with homework, classwork, and even paying attention in class, he showed early signs of a passion for teaching. “I didn’t really know I wanted to be a teacher until I took chemistry, junior year,” said Neri. Neri found that “Chemistry’s was not an easy subject, and a lot of people in my class were struggling, and I seemed to get it pretty quickly, so I got asked to help out a bunch of people, and that’s when I really found a passion for it.”

After college, Neri subbed at Morgan, waiting for a history position to open up locally. When nothing came out, he decided to try working at Bausch. He enjoyed it there, but 8 months later, while working on written manuals at Baush, he realized he might be a good fit to teach tech ed, and when a job opened up at Moragan, he took the position and has been an engineering teacher ever since.

“Tech ed has always been something that’s really interesting to me. When I was in high school, I took all of Mr. Enoch’s classes, and I really loved graphic design,” Neri added.

However, he couldn’t just start teaching. First, he had to take the Praxis 2 to be able to teach Engineering. Now, he is finishing up the process by going to school at CCSU, at night, to get his undergraduate degree.

Neri’s journey has always had twists and turns. He was a student at Morgan from 2012-2016. During his four years of high school here at Morgan, he was on the baseball and basketball teams. In Neri’s senior year, he received first team all shoreline, Shoreline Conference pitcher of the year, and Connecticut High School Coaches Association Allstate for Class S.

From there, Neri attended Southern Connecticut State University for four and a half years, where he got his undergraduate degree. Despite his stellar career as a baseball player, he quickly learned how fast you could be replaced on a college team. When he walked onto the Southern baseball team, they told him that there was a guy transferring, and if he transfers, then he wouldn’t on the team.

After stepping away from baseball, Neri found a new passion: Ultimate Frisbee. Neri first tried pretty much every intramural sport that was offered – but quickly found a real passion in Ultimate Frisbee and joined his school’s club team.

The team would travel for tournaments, even sometimes out of Connecticut. They went to a school in Rhode Island to play and also traveled down to New Jersey for a big tournament. Ultimate frisbee helped Neri make a lot of friends in college. He is still friends with some of these people to this day. “My favorite memory was when one of our roommates that was on the football team, and usually stayed in his room playing video games, heard me say a joke and from then on out he was part of our group,” recalled Neri.

Now Neri enters his next change in life, going back to school. Neri currently goes to Central Connecticut State University and is getting his master’s degree in science and STEM education, which will take him another two years. He is going back to school to get his undergraduate degree.

For him, the time required is what he struggles with. The hardest part about going to school while teaching is getting home late, and it’s a lot of work and not a lot of free time. He is currently taking classes like an engineering design course and the nature of science and technology. One of the assignments he remembers most is making a superhero mask.

Neri looks back at his career and is thankful for where he is, despite all the changes he went through to get here.

“I think what I do is way more interesting and fun than history on a day-to-day basis. It gives kids a chance to be super, super creative with what they’re actually designing and making,” closed Neri.