The Road to Holy Family High School – Mr. Colley

James Colley has a bit of a Carmen Sandiego feel to him.

He’s lived in the state of Georgia, Paraguay, and Peru, and brings a wealth of worldly experience to the faculty at Holy Family as a new Spanish teacher.

As you may be able to tell, he took no ordinary path to get here.

When he was 15, his father received a business deal in Paraguay, South America. He says, “My younger brothers went to school, but there was no school for me. So, I had to work for the company, and that is how I learned Spanish.”

He was then drafted into the United States Army in 1969 which brought him back to the United States.

From there, he had ended up serving for the next two years, one of the years being in Vietnam, where he picked up a saying that he has held close to him since, “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, then there will be peace.”

After he left the forces fifty years ago as of this month, he wound up becoming a carpenter, and then later was given a scholarship at Fort Lewis in Durango, Colorado.

After he graduated, he went to South America, this time in Peru where he taught English from 2008-2009.

Finally, he came back to the U.S. where he taught at public schools in Colorado until 2013 when he had decided to move to Bishop Machebeuf High School. The pandemic hit and he stopped teaching altogether, until this past year, he was reached out to by an old colleague and current Holy Family counselor Mr. Dan Hahn, who had informed him that Holy Family might have been looking for some new teachers to fill in one of the open positions.

He was excited to hear this because he believes he will bring a new aspect of learning and challenges to the student body. He states that in his classes, he uses zero English. Although this is something that we have seen many teachers use for the more advanced Spanish classes, he has had first-hand experiences in countries where the primary language is Spanish.

Mr. Colley is excited to bring a new perspective to the Holy Family Spanish program, and he hopes that with this outlook, he can bring a change for the betterment of the student body.