One of Salida High School’s most beloved teachers, Fred Maxwell, left teaching high school to teach college. At his time of departure, he was the AP World History, World History, and Psychology teacher. He took on the role of internship coordinator through Colorado Mountain College. Maxwell is working at CMC to promote work based learning with the aim to get students out of the classroom and into work in a career field. This is meant to get them in a career field they will enjoy working in in the future.

Each student will do about 6 hours a week of their internship and a total of 85 hours over the whole semester. At the end of the semester, they have a final presentation and a reflection they have to do. This class is for upperclassmen.

“There’s some classwork involved and then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, each student will then go to their internship that they choose,” Maxwell said.

Before Maxwell went on to pursue teaching, he had many different careers. He worked as a wildland firefighter and he also worked in construction. All the hot, dirty work made him want to switch to something where he can help kids. He first started teaching in a middle school in Oregon while coaching football. Maxwell eventually went on an impactful trip to New Zealand that made him want to move there to teach.  

“So I came back to Oregon and I told one of my good friends that I wanted to move to New Zealand […] and he said ‘well, there’s places in the United States that are just as cool. You’ve just never been there,’” Maxwell said.

After his friend told him this he started looking for cool places to live in the US. Maxwell had heard that the Monarch Crest trail was amazing, but he didn’t know exactly where it was. He knew it was in Colorado, so Maxwell looked for towns all over the state. That is when he found a teaching job here in Salida. 

When Maxwell isn’t teaching, he likes to hang out with his wife and dogs. He enjoys trying different restaurants, biking, camping together, and traveling to Oregon and British Columbia with them. He also enjoys mountain biking, dirt biking, skiing, playing guitar, swimming in the river, reading, hanging out with his friends in town, and golfing. Maxwell is thrilled to still get to spend time with highschoolers through his job.