Mr brian

Mr. Brian Neises

Interview by Proud Ua-Arak Photos by Kush Natani

Hello! Can you please give us a brief introduction of yourself? Hi, I’m Mr. Brian! I’ve been teaching for 20 years. I come from the state of Indiana in the US, but I’ve spent most of my time teaching internationally. This is actually my 4th school in Thailand--I came to Thailand 20 years ago, went to Turkey and the states for a couple of years, and came back to Thailand to teach. Most of my background is teaching the IB program, which I’m authorized in. I have two lovely daughters. An interesting thing to add is that my wife, Mrs. Kristi, taught at ICS for 10 years before we were married!

What brought you to teach at ICS and how did you find out about this school? My wife used to be the ICS Middle School Ministry Coordinator. I’ve known a lot of people here and have lots of friends that are still teaching here. Also, I’ve known Mr. Mike Holden for over 20 years, because we were college roommates for a few years.

What’s your favorite thing about ICS so far? I think my favorite thing about ICS so far is the “C” in ICS: Community. It’s one of the reasons we came back to ICS out of all the schools we could’ve gone to. We were really interested in making sure that our daughters were part of a school that had a good community, and the people: the teachers, the parents, the whole environment here at ICS are special. Having taught at many different schools, having worked with people and led workshops for hundreds of teachers from other international schools around Asia led me to see that there’s something special about the community here.

What are some things you’re looking forward to this school year? I’m looking forward to being back to teaching math! It’s been a while since I’ve taught just math—I’ve taught a couple of different things over the years and was most recently teaching science and social studies. There’s something I like about the logical progression of math, so it’s exciting getting to try some things out now. And just plugging back into the community and readjusting to Thailand after having been gone for a few years is something I’m looking forward to as well.

What are some of your favorite hobbies? Board games! It’s my number one hobby. I’ve been playing for many years and enjoy playing every weekend. One of my hobbies that I’m getting back into is keeping fish, because JJ Market (Chatuchak) in Thailand has one of the largest aquarium markets in the world. You can get really, really cool aquarium fish here really cheap compared to the other parts of the world, so now that my daughters are here they love the fish as well. They’re excited that we’re setting up a tank for

them in their bedroom, so that’s fun! And my third hobby is food. I love food, and so I’m very glad to be back in Bangkok where I can get good food.

Any final words or advice you’d like to share to students reading The Quill? My advice for the year that I’ve been giving my students, that I’d love for everybody to hear, is that it’s important to know and remember that current brain research tells us that anyone can learn anything with enough time. So, if you want to learn it, you can. Speed isn’t what’s important in learning. Sometimes we gotta take our time, but we can learn anything.