By Moriah Schranz

Grant Miller has taught at Maury High School for three years. Aside from being an English teacher for 9th and 10th grade, he leads Maury’s Model Judiciary Team and this paper, The Commodore Chronicle.

After three wonderful years, Miller will be taking his teaching all the way to São Paulo, Brazil, to teach at Chapel School. He accepted the position weeks ago and will be leaving in July.

While this adjustment may be hard for him, Miller has experience in Portuguese and a passion for learning more about a new culture.

He explains that he began to learn Portuguese at Fairfield University, where Miller attended undergrad.

“It was the only language that I actually enjoyed learning and was actually decent at,” Miller said. “And at one point, I was conversant. Then in my travels, I lost it because I wasn’t practicing it anymore. In my home state of Connecticut, it’s a relatively common language. There are folks from Portugal and Brazil there who speak it, but I traveled to Chicago and Colorado, and there I didn’t meet that many.”

Miller started studying Portuguese again this past year, and then he found his new job at the Chapel School.

“It was always a dream of mine to go,” Miller said. “I tried going to Brazil in college, and I wasn’t able to, and I figured, you only live once, so might as well just give it a shot. I was able to actually use Portuguese in the interview, and the lady who interviewed me said I was quase brasileiro, which means almost Brazilian, when I spoke. That’s obviously a pretty big compliment coming from a native Brazilian.”

Miller will be teaching 9th and 10th-grade English literature at Chapel. He will be expected to teach fully in English.

“It’s an American school that follows an American curriculum, and it’s essentially designed to help students if they want to go to universities in the US or in the UK, wherever they want to go, ” said Miller.

While Miller is excited for this new opportunity, he is sad to leave Norfolk.

“I originally came down here to help my mother, and I think that’ll probably be the hardest part, leaving her, because she was here by herself, but she wants me to go there,” Miller said. “If there’s anything else I might miss, it’s the sports culture. The way schools are here with sports is a lot different than how they are in Brazil. It’s a different experience. I’m used to staying late and then going to the basketball game after school and watching my students play or coming on a Friday night and going to a football game and knowing that one of my students is out there playing and cheering them on and telling them they did a good job the next day.”

Leon Sivells is another 9th and 10th-grade English teacher at Maury High School. Sivells and Miller have become close colleagues and friends over the years here. Sivells emphasized how he and Miller bonded inside and outside of work. 


”It’s much easier with Miller to collaborate because we were cool outside of school,” said Sivells.

Miller will be in Brazil for at least two years and is unsure what steps he will take after. He shared a message for his students.

“I guess if I were to dispense some advice, it would be that there really aren’t a whole lot of limits to what you can do if you decide to put your mind to it. I think if you told me when I was in high school that I’d be an international teacher, I would not have believed you. I think that now that I’ve decided to just leave and go for it, I feel like I can do what I want to do.”

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When I first joined the Maury Commodore Chronicle three years ago, I had almost no journalism experience and zero idea of how to write a newsworthy article. Over time, Mr. Miller has taught me how to interview, edit, write, ask questions, and enjoy the art that is reporting. Our weekly Wednesday meetings have helped me grow and discover my passion for journalism. I am sad to see Mr. Miller go, but I am grateful for the lessons he has entrusted to me. The Commodore Chronicle and all of Maury will miss him dearly, but we wish him luck and can’t wait to see him do great things in Brazil. -Moriah Schranz