Teacher Feature: Luke Sanders

If Jurassic Park was real, who would be the first person you’d think of that would work there? Well, for all of us in the BT community, Mr. Luke Sanders should be the first to come to mind. When he was a kid, he wanted to be a paleontologist or zoo keeper, so he could work at Jurassic Park if it became real.

Mr. Sanders grew up in Wichita, Kansas when he went to grade and a large high school. “I sang in the Madrigals Choir, ran track, and played football in high school,” he told me. His choir impressively sang at Carnegie hall and his senior year, the football team went undefeated and won state.

Mr. Sanders went to Newman University for his undergrad, which is in philosophy. His master’s degree is in zoo, aquarium, and animal shelter management, from the Colorado State biology department.

At Colorado State, Mr. Sanders was a graduate teaching assistant and he was also a research intern at the Denver Zoo. After graduating, he searched for zoo positions and biology teaching positions, and stumbled upon a private school in Kansas. Later on, while looking to move, Mr. Sanders chose Omaha over St. Louis. “I liked that BT had the small town feel but was right in the middle of the city,” he exclaimed.

Interestingly, Mr. Sanders has only animal based goals. An example being that he plans on having three more salamanders to finish having one of the eight obtainable salamander families. “If you told me in college that I would be a high school teacher in Omaha,” Mr. Sanders said, “I would not have believed any part of that sentence.”

His advice was short and sweet— a cycle that anyone can easily follow: “Do your best, have fun, be a good person, repeat.”