Hannah Reyes

About Hannah

Hannah Reyes holds a B.A. in Education from Michigan State University and an M.S. in Environmental Studies from Antioch University New England. Before joining the Interlochen Arts Academy faculty as an Instructor of Ecology and Advanced Biology, she taught life science courses in mid-Michigan and served as department chair.

A Third Culture Kid (TCK)—born in England and raised across parts of Western and Sub-Saharan Africa—she considers many places home. She now lives in beautiful northern Michigan with her husband and daughter, where she finds joy in engaging in ecological restoration and guiding students toward deeper connections with their own sense of place and role in the land and local community.

Reyes’s teaching is grounded in a deep desire for restoration and reconciliation—a return to places, systems, and relationships where all things have the capacity to flourish. A guiding question in her life and work is: “How can all things flourish to their full capacity?” This inquiry has shaped her exploration of ecosystems, social systems, and the nested connections between them. It is also what drew her to education, where she invites students to not only understand how the world works, but to imagine how we might live in meaningful partnership with it.

She often says she was born with wings and is working on roots—a nod to the tension and beauty of growing in place while carrying the perspective of many.

Student citizenship is the product of good teaching, not training. There exist educational systems that seek only to train. Teaching, as opposed to training, is the craft that develops not just student’s workplace skills, but expands their perspective and their consciousness of themselves. This awakening in young people is a form of freedom and empowers them to affect change with more substantive responsibility. I aspire to be a teacher, the type of change agent that helps students envision a world where many worlds are possible, by disrupting the predictive values and expectations we place on ourselves and others. The process of moving from trainer to teacher is the craft I continue to hone, the purpose of which is to make education the practice of freedom.