While growing up in Boulder, Colorado, journalism adviser and English teacher Michael Tyler saw his father working hard every day to run their family’s restaurant, The Village Coffee Shop. Tyler spent parts of his high school and college years washing dishes and cooking on a grill there alongside his sister and two stepsisters, who held jobs as cooks and waitresses.
Growing up, Tyler saw his father wake up at 2 a.m. many days to start preparing the restaurant to open. Tyler recalls that his father grilling rows of bacon so that when early-rising customers walked in at 5 a.m., the restaurant would be prepared to serve them.
One summer in college, he took over many of the opening duties that his dad did.
“Working that summer just gave me such an appreciation for the sacrifices that my father made for me,” Tyler said. “He really worked very hard physically in his job as a restaurant owner, and for me to do that same work was quite humbling.”
Though working in the family business taught him about physical labor and working in a restaurant, it cemented his desire to not pursue the family business. His dad and grandfather thought he might continue the family’s restaurant business, but the long hours and physical labor weren’t something Tyler wanted.
“There are easier ways to make a living than being on your feet for 14 hours a day,” he said. “I saw the physical toll it took on my dad and my grandfather, who had back problems and feet problems.”
Before becoming a teacher here in 1996, he also had jobs in construction and journalism.
Tyler went to college at the University of Colorado and majored in English..
After graduating from college, Tyler moved to Los Angeles and worked as an editor and editorial assistant at Creators Syndicate, which sells and distributes cartoons, columns, comic strips and other editorial content to news organizations.
“It wasn’t a startup but it had the atmosphere of a startup,” he said. “You worked really hard and everybody does everything.”
Tyler said it was an ideal entry-level job in the newspaper industry and it helped him realize he wanted to pursue a career related to writing and journalism. Through this first job, he had the opportunity to edit columnists’ stories and work with a multitude of cartoonists such as Johnny Hart, a famous cartoonist whose work was frequently featured in traditional newspapers and was recognized for its distinctive style.
“It was fun to get to interact with different professional writers and help them with their efforts,” Tyler said. “It’s interesting because some of the drafts they would turn in were a mess and you would have to do a lot of work to get them in good shape, although other people turned in clean drafts and you basically never touched them. You get to learn the individual personalities and how each writer has a different way of doing things.”
After graduating from UC Berkeley with a master’s degree in journalism in 1994, he found work at newspapers such as the Santa Cruz Sentinel and Bellevue Journal American, a paper that no longer exists. Tyler enjoyed the work but soon realized he wanted something more stable. The unpredictable nature of news made it almost impossible for Tyler to maintain a healthy work-life balance and regular hours.
Tyler said his early jobs and experience in various work environments also played a large role in his decision to begin teaching.
While working at a fast-paced restaurant that served hundreds of customers daily, he learned the importance of organization and a steady working rhythm. His father held him accountable for producing quality results, similar to the classroom environment he now works to create for students.
Similarly, Tyler’s high school teachers played a large role in his choice to become an educator.
“I had some very good English and history teachers who made a huge difference in keeping me engaged in school and making me really like school,” Tyler said. “I would like to make that kind of difference in young people’s lives.”