Since 2005, Brian OMahoney has been bringing the best out of his history students at Lincoln Academy in Newcastle. O’Mahoney teaches college prep U.S. history, world history, and Advanced Placement U.S. history. (Johnathan Riley photo)
Growth and change are part of life, and Lincoln Academy students have a quality selection of teachers and faculty to aid them in that journey. While every student isn’t noticeably impacted by their teachers, there are a handful of Lincoln Academy faculty members who stand out time and time again when alumni and current students discuss their favorite former educators.
Brian O’Mahoney has been bringing out the best from his history students at Lincoln Academy since 2005, teaching college prep U.S. history, world history, and Advanced Placement U.S. history during that time. He is currently the social studies department head.
O’Mahoney is well-known for creating a classroom environment that cultivates regular contributions, for cold-calling on students during class, and the thoughtful discussions that ensue. While not everyone is expected to know the answers, always, O’Mahoney believes that the question may be more important anyway.
“I had this mentor at my last school that used to say that the question had way more value and importance sometimes than the answer,” O’Mahoney said. “I think it’s really important for students to feel like they have to be on when they’re in the class.”
Being “on” can be a tall task for some in the classroom, but O’Mahoney knows demanding students be on all day isn’t a reasonable request.
“I want kids to be on when they’re in class, but they obviously can’t be on five hours a day and I think as a teacher, you have to remember that because you don’t just want to be the person that exhausts the kids,” O’Mahoney said. “But I think it’s important that people feel like they have to perform a little bit in class, that they have to try.”
O’Mahoney’s teaching style and expectations in the classroom may have developed while he was a student of the many wonderful teachers he had along the way. One in particular, who oversaw his teacher training in Ireland, where he was raised, didn’t let incompetence slide.
“I had this brilliant professor, Margaret Moore, who was terrifying, she was this little old lady and she said, ‘I’m not going to let any of you out of this program unless you know what you’re doing,’ and I wanted her to think I’m great,” O’Mahoney said.
While O’Mahoney has accrued a history of impacting his students, they weren’t the reason he became a teacher, at least not at first. O’Mahoney’s primary objective was to get into a profession that he would enjoy, and initially, he thought that would be as a lawyer. But in Ireland, where O’Mahoney was raised, to be a lawyer, students must do well enough in their end of high school exams.
“I did not do well enough in my end of high school exams to get in to study law,” O’Mahoney said, laughing. “My second choice was history and English. So, I got my second choice. The great irony there is if I’d gotten one grade higher in history, I would be a lawyer now. I got a C in history.”
As his last summer in college approached, O’Mahoney was looking for somewhere new to go. In previous summers he had gone to France or London and worked, but this time his eyes were on the states.
“My sister was teaching at the university at the time and when I walked into her office, I said to her ‘I think I’m going to go to the U.S. this summer.’ Her boss just happened to be there and he said ‘Oh, you should go to Maine, Maine is beautiful,”’ O’Mahoney said. “I was clearly impressionable.”
O’Mahoney went to Maine that summer and worked as a dishwasher down in Boothbay at Brown’s Wharf, returning the next summer to Maine, except to Gardiner to do the same after he had finished college back in Europe.
“I thought that I’d keep coming back so long as the interest continued,” O’Mahoney said.
O’Mahoney worked at the A1 diner in Gardiner and was a substitute for a kindergarten class in the local Gardiner school system, where he was tasked with helping facilitate an overcrowded classroom.
“That was really my entree into the idea that (teaching) was about the kids and not about the subject,” O’Mahoney said. “I worked in the kindergarten class for several months.”
O’Mahoney continued to work at the A1 Diner for the next few years, while subbing around the area, and he met his eventual wife, Kristen.
“(Kristen) was a new reason to be interested in the area,” O’Mahoney said.
Currently, the couple lives in Whitefield with their two sons. Whitefield is a physically large town possessing a lot of personality, according to O’Mahoney.
“The Fourth of July parade in Whitefield always has some goofiness to it,” O’Mahoney said. “But I don’t think the town takes itself too seriously. We do have strong feelings about issues, and the Whitefield town meeting lasts all day. There’s a tradition of careful stewardship of the town, the elected people, as far as I’ve seen, are people who sincerely want the best for the town.”
While O’Mahoney loves living where he does, the novelty and magic of the Midcoast doesn’t only reside in Whitefield. O’Mahoney marvels at the institutions of the area, too, from the strong fishing communities on the peninsula to Lincoln Academy and the lasting businesses like Colby and Gale Inc. and Renys.
“Having organizations like (Coastal Rivers Conservation Trust) paying attention to the river all the time, and the oyster farmers, is actually really important to the area and really good for it,” O’Mahoney said. “Having a high school, as old as it is that is so close to town, walkable for the students, is a really unique experience in modern America.”
O’Mahoney is approaching 20 years of teaching at Lincoln Academy and while he isn’t looking to stop any time soon, he has thought about his community involvement when the day he steps away does arrive.
“I often think that doing something for the town of Whitefield would be good. Civic engagement is important. I think it would be nice to try to be involved with the planning board or something to do with town government,” O’Mahoney said.
O’Mahoney thought, going into teaching, that it was about the subject being taught and one of the great joys of his career has been working with and seeing how another variable, the students, is perhaps the most rewarding aspect of being a teacher.
“One of the great surprises when you start teaching, you realize ‘Oh, there’s a whole other component to this.’ That is unpredictable and constantly varying, and challenging and wonderful,” O’Mahoney said. “I think (this has) worked beautifully. You know, I’m very happy not to be a lawyer.”
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