Chugrad McAndrews
cmcandrews@mountainsongschool.org
I have enjoyed a fruitful and eclectic professional and personal life journey. I graduated from the Colorado Springs School, then earned a Bachelor’s Degree in International Service and Development from World College West, where I studied in Nepal for 6 months. After graduation, I worked as a Preschool teacher and with Special Education in the public school system in San Francisco for several years. Shortly after, I opened my own business as a commercial photographer, using skills I acquired and cultivated since the age of 17, and through apprenticeships. After about 20 years running my own business in the San Francisco Bay Area, I was recruited by Amazon, who moved me to Seattle to work on their internal high-end advertising photography. After that, I worked for a small tech company in Denver as a Scrum Master, then eventually transitioned into the non-profit sector, earning a Certificate in Non-Profit Management from the University of Washington and working as the Operations Manager at a Foodbank in Seattle. I support several organizations through volunteer work. In recent years, I have arranged my life to enable me to be a full-time dad and partner and dedicate my attention to understanding Early Childhood Development and various forms of educational philosophy, including Unschooling and Waldorf. This position enabled me and my wife to raise our sons for several years in the jungles and oceans of the Philippines on my wife’s ancestral land where Nature was their primary teacher. Now in the US, I apply these experiences in work locally. I have three sons attending Mountain Song and an older son who currently lives in Peru.
I have always been moved by music and dance, particularly arts of the African Diaspora. In my early 20’s I began studying a Brazilian form of martial arts called Capoeira, which led to a training tour of Brazil with my teacher and other students. After a long gap, I am currently studying Capoeira with all four of my sons. I have been fortunate to study other music and dance forms such as Afro-Peruvian, Traditional West African, and Tahitian from Master-level teachers and have done many performances with a variety of groups over the years. I enjoy being around multiple languages and have moderate fluency in Spanish and Portuguese.
I am a firm believer in the power of Multicultural spaces and believe we all have a lot to learn from one another if we practice Active Listening, and maintain a long-term vision of an Equitable and Just society and world. I am appreciative of this opportunity to work with the Mountain Song community to grow the school with this vision.
