When you walk into the combined finance and business classrooms, you see two teachers fuse their knowledge to reach young minds. One of those teachers — who admits he was not always destined to be in the classroom, is new to C. M. Russell High School.

“I wanted to be a mechanical engineer,” Connor Schulte said. “ I thought that would be way cooler than teaching.”

Hedecided against being an engineer and decided to become a teacher. Schulte came to CMR as a business educator after five years of teaching in Cascade. He said he was inspired to teach by one of his high school history teachers, Lora Lee Davenport, at Butte Central Catholic High School.

“ One day, [Davenport] comes into my science class and she’s like, ‘Mr. Schulte, I just noticed that you haven’t been turning in your test for the last couple weeks.’ I’m like yeah, well, I’ve been getting graded. She’s like, ‘You’re right. Next time you come to my class don’t bring your computer.’ And I didn’t. And so she slapped an old, like one of those flip-up notepads on my desk. She’s like, ‘Write,’ so I had to hand write like a 10-page history test.”

Schulte teaches CTEI Internship, Finance and Career Prep, Intro to Comp Sci and Marketing in the business department. He joined CMR not only as a teacher, but also as a football coach. Inspired by his father and loving the school spirit everyone showed, he grew to love coaching and teaching.

“My dad was my first football coach,” he said. “I was the waterboy.”

He landed in the business department not knowing how much he would enjoy it. However, if he could teach any subject at any grade level, Schulte said he would be an elementary gym teacher. 

“Elementary P.E. Just hanging around kids all day.”