Photo courtesy of John Hasemier
Performing on a national tour in Bend, Indiana, Mr. Ian Hunthausen ’03 arrives at a shady location with some questionable people after he and his band were invited to perform for another party the day after their venue.
This turned out to be one of Mr. Hunthausen’s most memorable moments from his two national tours. “It was kind of one of those don’t judge a book by its cover…be smart but don’t be overly judgemental,” Mr. Hunthausen explained.
The people at this “shady” party ended up being the nicest group of people he had met on the tour and they were welcoming and truly enjoyed watching Mr. Hunthausen and his band play.
Mr. Hunthausen is returning to Brophy after 18 years, and is bringing along with him his experience, ideas, stories and talents, many of which pertain not just to teaching, but also to the music industry.
Mr. Hunthausen, who was adopted from El Salvador at a very young age, started music at the age of 11 with the piano, then moved onto the electric guitar at 12. He didn’t start playing in bands until arriving at Brophy through activities like the Music Exchange and Battle of the Bands.
While taking a two-year gap between colleges from the age of 19 to 21, Mr. Hunthausen spent a majority of the time pursuing his music career and touring with a variety of bands, including two national tours, going as far as the Michigan-Indiana area.
While attending Brophy and his first national tour, Mr. Hunthausen was with a band called XLp. He then moved on to the band Dreams and the Crucible for his second national tour.
Once returning home, he’s performed for multiple bands, including The Disconnect and Rad Stacey, which is who he is currently performing for.
Now, Mr. Hunthausen still does play guitar, but also sings, plays bass, piano and a little bit of drums. He attributes his main focus in music now to producing and recording, since he has a degree in Sound Engineering and Music Business and Management from Arizona State University.
“I love performing, but I work with a lot of musicians, especially during the pandemic since they could go out and perform but still wanted to record stuff. I can have one person in, record them, put stuff together, so working with people is really what I do now and I record and produce stuff they really like,” Mr. Hunthausen said.
He has no plans of stopping his music passion any time soon, and hopes to make improvements to extracurricular band opportunities here at Brophy, such as the Music Exchange.
Mr. Hunthausen considered working at Brophy a career goal of his and it was something that he had been working on since before graduating from Arizona State.
Once he saw that there was a job opening on the Brophy website, Mr. Hunthausen pulled the trigger and made the switch from Basis to Brophy, and is now teaching AP English Language and Composition, as well as Creative Writing.
Although he achieved his goal of working at Brophy, he still has many more ambitions, goals, and duties that are important for his teaching career.
“As a teacher, being able to pay forward what my teachers did for me, which was not just to teach me how to learn and do all of the teaching stuff, but to help me to find my own voice and advocate for myself. They taught me the value in education, but also the value in having interests and pursuing them,” Mr. Hunthausen explained.
Mr. Hunthausen also hopes to be an advocate for students. He wants to be able to support students through the rigor of being successful at Brophy while also balancing personal lives, considering he has gone through the same process.
His dedication towards his students is not only shown through his lessons and support, but can also be seen physically.
Mr. Hunthausen has two tattoos dedicated to his students at Basis. The first tattoo is a rose with the number 17 on it, which he got during the senior trip of the class of 2017.
The other tattoo he has for his students was for the class of 2018 at Basis, which he let design as a representation of “all of the positivity that came from being a teacher and sending those kids forward..they left an impression on [him],” so Mr. Hunthausen wanted to make sure that the impression was permanent.
Although Mr. Hunthausen is now at Brophy, he hopes to bring along everything that he has learned thus far while teaching.
Mr. Hunthausen began his professional teaching career at St. Theresa while still working to get his graduate degree from ASU.
After teaching at St. Theresa and earning his graduate degree, Mr. Hunthausen went on to teach at Basis Chandler for eight years, for which he gives credit for a lot of the lessons he has learned about teaching outside of his degree.
“There is so much more to teaching than your subject matter…So many teachers will lose sight of what we are really doing, which is modeling behavior, advocating for students, being emotionally supportive, letting students know that they are safe in our classroom,” Mr. Hunthausen said.