Henrico's Top Teachers – Chris Lundberg, Steward School

If it’s true that the best teachers are the most eager learners, then Chris Lundberg’s presence among a group of top teachers in Henrico should come as no surprise.

“I always had an interest in pretty much anything,” he said, recalling that as a kid, he excitedly played whichever sport was in season.

Later, in college, he was attracted to science “because it had so many cool words,” he said – but also was intrigued by law, medicine, teaching and ministry. So, he majored in biology at Randolph Macon and minored in religion and philosophy. But when his father, a contractor, died suddenly during his senior year, Lundberg put his own future on hold to finish the jobs his dad had started and provide for his family.

A year later, he returned to school, this time at VCU, “to take some classes I hadn’t taken previously.”

He found himself enthralled by several education courses and, coupled with a spin at MCV in the pulmonary function lab, started to envision a career in teaching.

Those few whirlwind years led to Lundberg’s first teaching job in 1982 in Goochland County, where he spent five years. Then it was back to Randolph Macon for the challenge of development and fundraising work – which he enjoyed, to a point.

But after a handful of years, “I found that I enjoyed working with student volunteers more than going golfing and doing power breakfasts with donors,” he said, so he went to graduate school and earned a master’s in educational psychology, then worked a year at UVA before heading back to the classroom at Lee Davis High School (now Mechanicsville High) in Hanover.

He spent a few years there, then moved to Patrick Henry High for a dozen in a teacher/administrator role. Struck again by the itch for a new challenge, he moved to the Math and Science Innovation Center, where he spent eight years teaching students all over the metro region as program coordinator

“That was a really eye-opening experience,” he recalled, explaining that he could observe classroom teachers in each locality and learn from them what was working (or not working) in each locality.

“There are just so many great teachers in the Richmond area,” he said.

Eventually, though, he missed being able to work with a set of students regularly, and he began looking for a way to “work my way back down the career ladder,” he joked. The search led him back to a classroom for the last time – this time at The Steward School, where he played an integral role in the launch of the Bryan Innovation Lab (a program designed to foster new ways of learning and problem-solving).

The final decade-plus of his career at Steward gave Lundberg the joy of being able to devote individual attention to each of his students – something that was much more difficult at most of his other stops, except for his first one in Goochland.

“When you’re working with 12 or 15 students instead of 25 or 30, just the difference you can make is night and day,” he said. “I do a lot of labs with kids, and they do a lot of writing. If a kid does a lab and writes it up, I can make corrections and they can do it again. When you’re in a public school and have so many kids . . . too often we’re just wholesaling kids and just moving them through can’t spend the individual time with them.”

He views more one-on-one time from teachers as key not only to improved learning for students but also improved social and mental health.

Of recent spikes in youth violence, Lundberg said, “The reason this is happening to a lot of these kids is that nobody’s taking the time to take an interest in them – they’re falling through the cracks. At a smaller school, you can spend some time with them. It just makes all the difference in the world because kids know you care about them and you’re invested in them. If you go to a small school and teachers can take time with you, that kid is going to find some kind of connection that they’re not getting at home.”

Lundberg’s attention to each student has stood out to those who have spent time in one of his classrooms over the years – including a mother he taught early in his career and her daughter, who was among his final class of students at Steward this year. (He retired June 10.)

“He understands the teaching craft and really makes his content engaging and relevant to all his students,” a nominator wrote of Lundberg. “He possesses the ability to explain difficult concepts in a way that resonates with students and stays with them. He cares about his students and really enjoys interacting with them in class and beyond attending plays, speeches and performances. . . His wisdom, approachability and enthusiasm make his classes the one in which students want to be.”

In retirement, Lundberg plans to spend more time with his wife Anne, a Latin teacher at Glen Allen High School (and herself an honoree of the Citizen’s 2014 Henrico’s Top Teachers edition) and enjoy time at the bay in Heathsville, in addition to putting his contracting skills to work again to restore and refinish captain’s chairs and fix other items of interest.

His exit advice to school administrators is simple: Reduce class sizes dramatically, cut red tape, don’t worry about investing so much in the latest technology – “Just get a teacher and a room and let ‘em go.”