Two Lakewood Ranch High teachers retire after 38-year careers

Two longtime Lakewood Ranch High teachers, both with 38 years of experience, are retiring.

Both grew up in Indiana and went to high schools 12 miles apart. Daniel Bryan-Beachler graduated from Whitko Jr/Sr High School in 1973. Bryan Thomas received his diploma from Columbia City High School in 1982.

They never met as teens, but they both ended up moving to Florida and teaching at Lakewood Ranch High School. 

Bryan Thomas 

Thomas, the Lakewood Ranch High science department chair, has worked at the school since it opened in 1998. Before that, he worked at Southeast High School for 11 years right out of college. He was also a cross country and track and field coach from 1987 to 2017.

During Thomas’ time at Southeast, he taught freshman Jeremy Edwards in 1990. Thomas described his handwriting as “horrific” and said it was very hard to read. He said Edwards wasn’t performing well in school, so he took a lot of time to decipher Edwards’ handwriting and gave him advice on how to do better in order to succeed. 

"I said, 'Jeremy, you're brilliant. I can tell you understand it and you can apply it, but people are going to see this, and they're going to presume you don't care and that you're lazy,'" Thomas said.

After that conversation, Edwards improved his handwriting significantly.

Years later, Thomas received an email from Edwards. 

Edwards thanked Thomas for the conversation they had and told him how important that conversation was to him. Edwards eventually attended Cornell University and later became an assistant professor at the University of Florida. He was proud that others had seen his brilliance, even with the terrible handwriting. 

“So often as teachers, we don't see or hear the outcome, but all these teachers here are making a huge positive influence on the kids,” Thomas said. “As a classroom teacher, you don't see that end result.”

Photo by Madison Bierl

Thomas said his son Cameron Thomas, Lakewood Ranch High class of 2013, and his daughter Breanna Thomas, class of 2017, gave him the most valuable feedback while eating at the dinner table every night when he taught them in the biology honors class during their freshman years.

“They were brutally honest and if they thought it stunk, it stunk, and they told me why, and I adjusted my teaching to what I was hearing from valid feedback,” Thomas said. “Teachers never get that.”

A piece of valuable feedback that Thomas’ daughter Breanna gave him was that there was too much focus on note-taking. 

“I used to have the kids write out all the notes and my daughter said, ‘That stinks Dad,’” said Thomas.  

Breanna told her dad that she gets tired of writing and was not fully engaged when he teaches. She missed the graphics and photos he would show because she was busy writing. She suggested he give the students an outline with the most important lessons so they could be more present in class. He followed her suggestions.

“Certainly there was no favoritism and, if anything, I was harder on them than any of my other students,” Bryan said. “They had a tutor at home if they needed it, and that was the difference.” 

Thomas took his coaching skills and implemented them in the classroom, which included motivating the students, being organized, and keeping track of student data. 

“The best part of being a science teacher is working with the kids in the lab and just seeing the light bulb come on,” Thomas said.

He now looks forward to having a more laid-back schedule with time for hobbies.

“I think it's a longevity issue," he said. "You get to a certain point, you're aging, and this doesn't get any easier. I'm up at 4:45 a.m. every day, working until 3 or 4 p.m., and that's a grind.” 

Thomas said he would like to do some sort of tutoring when he is retired or find a part-time retail job to keep him busy. His wife Deena Thomas has been retired from teaching for 10 years and is a volunteer usher at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall. He plans to join her.

“I'm a concrete, sequential workaholic," he said. "I'm going to slow down, but I'm going to stay busy, too.”

Daniel Bryan-Beachler 

Bryan-Beachler was not always set on being a teacher and had a 14-year career as a carpenter before he began teaching full time in 1987. 

“I did not take any college level classes when I was in high school. I wanted to work with my hands,” Bryan-Beachler said.

Bryan-Beachler decided he didn’t want to be a construction worker full time and said it was a beautiful day when he was hired to teach. He recalled all of the calluses on his hands when he was interviewed for his first teaching job at Bayshore High School in 1987. 

“I didn't look necessarily like a construction worker because I dressed for the interview, but I had to sell it to be able to get hired,” Bryan-Beachler said. “I knew I could prove myself. I had no doubt.”

Prior to his time at Lakewood Ranch High School, Bryan-Beachler taught at Bayshore High School, Harlee Middle School, Lincoln Middle School, Manatee Sheriff’s Bootcamp and Myakka Elementary. 

Photo by Madison Bierl

He has worked at Lakewood Ranch High since 2001 in multiple areas including special education, agriculture and English. His last 14 years have been in the English department.

For the past several years, Bryan-Beachler has been teaching students who had not yet passed the state-required English language arts test for The Florida Assessment of Student Thinking (FAST). His students must be proficient in order to graduate.

“It's practice, practice, practice every day. There's nothing magical. It's a lot of repetition," Bryan-Beachler said. "Do they get bored? They do, but they need that quantity of repetition. So that's how I have approached it.” 

Bryan-Beachler said part of the reason he’s successful is because he is able to communicate with students and reassure them that tests are just tests and they are not truly measured by the outcome.   

"I tell them, 'What you need to know is you're a smart person. This doesn't tell you whether you're smart of not,'" he said. "It's creating anxiety because you have to get it in order to graduate."

Bryan-Beachler taught boys from 1993 to 1999 for the Manatee County Sheriff's Boot Camp and was the first teacher in the program teaching all subjects. He said deputies were in his classroom every day for security purposes, and there were no discipline problems. 

“There was nothing I had to worry about. It was pure teaching, being able to just purely teach and focus on education without having to worry about any of that other stuff,”  Bryan-Beachler said. “It was a joyful experience.”

Bryan-Beachler, 69, is looking forward to retirement. He is looking into purchasing a boat, wants to organize old family photos, and he wants to do a lot of gardening. 

“I'm going to plant things and grow things. There's an endless amount of things,”  Bryan-Beachler said. “I still like building things and I'm going to build my shop back up and be able to create things again so I will not be bored.”

Bryan-Beachler looks forward to traveling to Scotland with his wife Linda Bryan-Beachler, who is also a teacher and works at Dr. Mona Jain Middle School. He also wants to spend time with his nine grandchildren. 

“I am looking forward to not having the clock ticking,” Bryan-Beachler said.  “I've loved this year. I have not burned out, but I'm ready and it's time."