Mr. Shoup comes to St. Paul’s Academy in 2015 from Archway School in Berkeley, his most recent stop in a peripatetic professional career of teaching and administration covering four countries and four states. An original native of the northeast, Bruce attended prep school in western Massachusetts and attained his undergraduate degree at John Carroll University with a degree in English literature and a minor in Russian studies.

After working for eighteen months in a Maine hardware store where he learned the “practical arts”, Bruce went on to get a Master’s in education at Antioch New England in Keene, New Hampshire. After nine years of teaching in Lebanon, Dubai UAE and Saudi Arabia, Bruce returned with his family to be the Assistant Head, and middle school teacher at Berwick Academy in Maine, founded by John Hancock in 1791. From there he went on to Head the Evergreen School in Seattle for ten years, three Catholic high schools including six years as President of De La Salle in California and a return engagement in Dubai as a leading member of a corporate school establishment firm. Mr. Shoup has managed to be in the classroom as a teacher almost every year of his almost forty year career. “Why else work in schools unless you can work with students? That’s why I chose this career.”

His Northwest pursuits include kayaking, fly fishing, golf and woodworking.

Mr. Shoup has two adult children and two preschool grandchildren who currently live in New York City looking down at Central Park. “When I get to be with them, my main job is to get their hands in the dirt. I call it paleolithic learning…”

A favorite saying: “A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.” ~ Horace Mann