David Liebmann

ACADEMIC INSTRUCTOR

David holds master’s degrees from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education where he was a 2020-21 Sustainability Fellow, Middlebury’s Bread Loaf School of English where he was the John M. Kirk, Jr. Scholar at Lincoln College, Oxford University. At Middlebury, he earned a BA cum laude in a major he designed examining the intersections of people and the environment. David has served as a head of school, assistant head of school, admissions coordinator, and teacher in independent schools for more than 30 years. His first love is the classroom, and he has taught English and the humanities to ninth through twelfth graders. He enjoys developing student agency and voice in writing and helping students find and share their passions through language. An avid reader and writer, David has published in magazines ranging from Net Assets and Independent School to Birding and Pittsburgh Quarterly.

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I have always loved words. In second grade, I started to write my first book. I typed two pages of science fiction and gave up, but I never lost my desire to be a writer. As a high school student, I embraced poetry and fiction and joined the student literary magazine as a contributor and editor. By the time I started college, I found writing fun and easy, a way to express myself and a way to shape my life.

When I graduated from Middlebury, I became a teacher in an environmental studies program for 11th graders called Chewonki’s Maine Coast Semester. There, I learned how to bring out the best from students as they became authors of not only essays, but of their lives. I came to see that language was a vehicle for students to share how they understand the world and what makes them unique.

I’ve found that with coaching and support, every student can find their voice and describe what they love. Conveying interests and passions authentically makes a student jump out in a class and on college applications, too. Because I’ve worked with thousands of young people from India to Indiana, I know that there is no single path that colleges expect kids to tread. Instead, schools and universities and their teachers and professors want to read about real people with genuine lives, ideas, and pursuits. Helping students embrace the power of words and convey who they are is my calling and my life’s work.