Mr. Anderson grew up in grew up in Philadelphia, right near Villanova University. He taught in Plainfield South High School, which is near Joliet, for 2 years. It was a big school with about 3,500 kids. When his wife and him got married in 2006 they chose to move down south to be closer to family. Her folks live in small town called Lewisville, a town near Flora. While there, she was teaching at Lawrenceville, and he was teaching at Red Hill. He was there for 8 years.

He could have stayed at Red Hill for a long time and been what they call a “lifer”, but a couple of people approached him and asked if he had ever considered working for Edward Jones. “Part of me always wanted to own my own business and be in the corporate world; you only live once right, so I went after it.” He did that for seven years. “In a lot of ways that was a very cool job.”

Then along came March of 2020, which is when the whole world changed. “I’m kind of a spiritual guy you know, and I had this idea of getting back to working with youth again. It was something that was important to me, and I never could figure out really how to make that happen. That’s until somebody down in Lawrence County just kind of mentioned to me, hey did you know that Palestine was looking for a math teacher? You guys have a unique spot here. Compared to a lot of other larger districts, there’s a lot more relationship-driven opportunities, which is good right. When you have students who want to learn, they succeed. At other schools I don’t necessarily feel like that was the case. I felt like it was more politically driven, so I felt I was stepping into a pretty good situation here.”

Mr. Anderson has four kids that range in age from 12 all the way down to 5. He likes to work in the garden and mentioned, “I used to do crazy things, like working out, clearly I don’t do that now, but a lot of my time is spent encouraging my kids to work hard and do their thing.” He is also heavily involved in his church. He sometimes even fills in for people and preaches. So, next time you see Mr. Anderson in the hallway or class, make sure to give him a warm welcome. He obviously seems excited to be here; we need to appreciate that and make sure he has nothing but good memories here at PHS. Also, his birthday is March 9th in case you were wondering when to get him that present.