Chris Obermeyer
Chris Obermeyer
Chris has been teaching high school science for five years. He started his teaching career at Woodrow Wilson High School and currently teaches at Cardozo Education Campus. While at Wilson, Chris had many roles and achievements but most notably Chris organized the city’s first ever LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning) Pride Day in a public school. This year Chris expanded this program to Cardozo. Chris’s work inside and outside of school led him to receive the 2014 Mayor’s Community Service Award and the 2015 American University Alumni Rising Star Award . Chris spends most of his time outside the classroom advocating for LGBTQ and immigrant youth. As a result of the certificate program, Chris has started a coalition tasked with creating guidelines for educators to modify and amend health curriculum to make it relevant and inclusive of LGBTQ youth. Additionally, through Chris' work on the DC Center's Youth Working Group he brought together local and national organizations and DC Council Member David Grosso to write and introduce the "Youth Suicide Prevention and School Climate Survey Act of 2015" which mandates annual suicide prevention education for all school based staff and collects data about school climate. Chris regularly works with nonprofits and schools to train students and staff on issues pertinent to LGBTQ youth.
Chris identified health disparities faced by LGBT youth and examined LGBT inclusivity of health education in the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS). He also explored school-based barriers preventing access to an inclusive health education in DCPS. He then created recommendations to overcome school-based barriers and created a draft of curricular addendums and pedagogical modifications to create an inclusive and relevant health education curriculum for LGBT youth kn the DCPS system. In the summer of 2016 his recommendations were adopted by the DC School Board and DCPS for the Public Schools Health Education Standards and will be implemented for the 2016-17 school year. More information about students' capstone projects can be found on our Capstone page.
M.Ed.’13 in Curriculum and Instruction, Education Policy and Leadership, American University, Washington, D.C.
B.Sc.’10 (Hons.) in Biology and Religious Studies and ’09 (Hons) Gatton Academy of Mathematics and Science, Western Kentucky University Bowling Green, KY.