The Comeback

In fall 2006, Sean Guthrie ’01, MEd ’14, found himself in the last place he expected—standing in front of a group of students at a Boston public school. A few months earlier, he’d witnessed the collapse of his childhood dream come true, a career in the NFL. Unsure of what to do next, he’d agreed to give a presentation to students about professional sports. After his talk, he sat in on a math class where a teacher was struggling to explain how to solve algebraic equations.

“Is it okay if I try?” Guthrie asked the teacher. Soon, he was showing students how to cancel out variables. The students began to grasp the concept, and one of them turned to the teacher and said, “Why didn’t you teach us to do it that way? It’s so easy.” A rush came over Guthrie he could only compare to the feeling of sacking a quarterback. “I’ll never forget it,” Guthrie said. “The spark just went off.”

That moment started Guthrie down a different path than the one he’d laid out for himself back when he started out as a defensive end in high school, became a captain of the BC football team, and played in the NFL. With professional football now behind him, Guthrie would become a teacher. He spent eight years in public schools before returning to his alma mater in 2014 to earn a master’s at the Lynch School of Education and Human Development. Now, he serves as assistant head of school at the Fessenden School, a private boys’ academy in West Newton, Massachusetts, where he’s transferred the leadership skills he learned on the gridiron to a new passion for shaping young minds.

Growing up in Miami in a working-class neighborhood sandwiched between housing projects, Guthrie excelled at basketball and football. His mother, Harieta, who came from Fiji, was a public-school teacher who always had chicken and rice simmering on the stove for neighbors or needy students to share. “She taught me the importance of community and family—everybody would always come to our house for a meal,” Guthrie said, sitting in his office at Fessenden in a puffy blue vest over a shirt and tie. He projected a quiet charisma, with a natural calm that belied his six-foot-four, 290-pound frame.

His father, Ian, from Jamaica, was an army vet who never complained about hard work. After Hurricane Andrew decimated the neighborhood, Ian repaired the family’s house himself. Then he used the insurance money to buy a nearby fixer-upper, waking Guthrie up early during the summer and school vacations to help with the work. “He taught me discipline, a dedication to getting the task done,” Guthrie said.

He was good at math but Guthrie said he didn’t apply himself at Christopher Columbus High School, dreaming instead of becoming a sports star. By sophomore year, his coaches were telling him he had a chance at Division I football. Guthrie had never heard of BC, but his father knew about the Eagles from the “Miracle in Miami,” Doug Flutie’s legendary 1984 Hail Mary victory pass. Guthrie accepted BC’s offer of a scholarship.

Then 220 pounds, he was a little small at defensive end, and red-shirted his freshman year to bulk up while playing on the scouting team to help the starters prepare for games. “I always gave it my best effort, and they didn’t like that,” Guthrie recalled. “The other guys wanted to take it a little easy, and we even got in some fights about it.” He persevered, however, and was rewarded with the Scouting Team Award for hardest-working player. “It’s still one of the awards I’m proudest of,” he said.

Over the next three years, his grit led him up the ranks to captain. His most memorable moment came during a 2001 home game against Notre Dame that started with him breaking through the line but missing a sack. Toward the end of the game, however, Notre Dame was within yards of a winning touchdown when Guthrie once again broke through. Guthrie barreled into the quarterback, throwing him to the ground to close out the game as the sellout crowd went wild.

Guthrie wasn’t selected in the 2002 NFL draft, but he remained optimistic about his chances to establish himself in the league after signing as a free agent with the New York Giants. Then he tore his patellar tendon and was sidelined for his entire rookie season. He made the best of it, working an internship at Loews Hotels while rehabbing in Miami, but it was a hard year being without a team for the first time. After that, his knee was never quite the same, and he drifted from the Giants to the Indianapolis Colts and then the Washington Redskins. By 2006, he had to admit his dream wasn’t going to happen. “I gave this everything I had, and had no regrets,” he said. “But I was ready to try something new.”

After that math class back in 2006, the school’s assistant principal asked Guthrie if he’d consider teaching summer school for students who needed to pass math to graduate. Guthrie accepted the offer and felt another burst of pride when all his students passed. “They were literally jumping up and fist pumping,” Guthrie recalled. Inspired, he accepted several long-term substitute teaching positions around Boston, finding that he was a natural in the classroom.

His unflappable demeanor and the caring approach that he learned from his mother seemed to help him reach even the most difficult students. “Some people can get triggered when someone says things that are disrespectful to them, but I have the mentality that everyone wants to be happy and thrive if given the opportunity,” he said. By refusing to take their disruptions personally, he earned respect from students. “They could sense I really cared on a deep level about them being successful—not just in math, but in life.”

Guthrie spent the next several years teaching in Boston and Cambridge public schools. He then returned to BC in 2014, enrolling at the Lynch School to earn his master’s of education through the Donovan Urban Teaching Scholars Program, a yearlong fellowship that equips teachers to provide high-quality education in urban schools. In addition to lessons in pedagogy and child psychology, he learned to connect with a broader range of students through a placement at a Cambridge middle school. When he struggled to connect with a student there from Denmark who was failing math, Guthrie first discovered that the boy was a Harry Potter fan and then watched the movies for a week, coming back with a new language to reach him.

Guthrie continued to teach at the middle school after graduating with his master’s degree. The principal noticed Guthrie’s students were coming into his office less frequently than others, and made him sixth-grade team leader, encouraging him to become a principal himself. In 2016, he took a position as an assistant principal at a Boston school.

The following year, Guthrie became the principal of the Young Achievers Science and Math Pilot School in Boston. The school was partnering with outside organizations to offer electives including coding, robotics, and boat building, but Guthrie observed that many students were being left behind in the classroom as teachers focused on the more successful kids. Assistant principal Jonathan Scott said Guthrie worked to institute a culture of helping every student succeed, while hiring more teachers of color to serve as role models for the largely minority student body. “He was a change agent,” Scott said. “He really believed in social justice through academic excellence and responsible leadership—and would repeat that ad nauseam.” Guthrie butted heads with some teachers who resisted the new culture, Scott said, but he never did so aggressively. “He’s a huge guy, but I’ve never seen him raise his voice, no matter what. He was very data-driven. He wanted to attack problems, not personalities.”

The job began to overwhelm Guthrie, however, as he often spent nights and weekends transporting students to various events, or even dealing with the police on their behalf. Eventually, the pressure took its toll on Guthrie, who has six kids with his wife Natalia (Danglade) Guthrie ’01. “It’s a lot more than a school. You are a psychologist, father figure, a counselor with parents,” he said. “My blood pressure was through the roof.”

In 2019, Guthrie took a new job as head of middle school at Fessenden, a very different environment, with a campus of red brick buildings and blossoming trees, and lab spaces with modern science equipment. He was leery at first about teaching in such a privileged environment, but realized he had a lot to contribute. “I understand the challenges of low-income students on a deep level, but these students have their own challenges—learning differences, ADHD, the pressure from parents,” he said. “What drew me was the emphasis on character education and core values, helping students learn how to make the right decisions.”

When he first arrived, the school was having difficulties with rambunctious students wrestling in the hallways. Guthrie made the decision, controversial in some corners, to allow them to channel that energy into playing tackle football at recess. “But it’s under my rules, and once I hit the whistle, it’s over,” he told them. The activity became instantly popular, with one student even creating player cards for his peers. Guthrie also instituted a student of the week program to honor an exemplary pupil, and drew on his sports background to create weekly meetings for students to reflect on goals and achievements.

Soon, discipline infractions were plummeting and a new sense of purpose was emerging among students. “It had a big impact on the culture of taking pride in the things we do,” said Rory Sanborn, Fessenden’s athletic director. “Fostering the idea of doing the right thing and acknowledging it when you see it made it something that others really sought to do.”

In 2021, Guthrie’s life came full circle when he found himself in Alumni Stadium again—this time to accept an honorary degree from BC as Doctor of Humane Letters “for his accomplishments as an educator and his dedication to improving the lives of children.” The following year, he was promoted to assistant head of school at Fessenden.

Guthrie, then, has firmly established himself as an academic leader, but he’s never let himself get too far from football. He helps coach at Fessenden, and last year he was named director of player development for the BC football program. In that role, he applies what he’s learned from teaching and leadership to help players develop skills on and off the field. In one recent program, for example, players were taught to examine how their inner monologue affected their performance, and to consider how they could manage negative thoughts for themselves and their teammates.

Reflecting on his career, Guthrie marveled at the twisting path that led him away from Alumni Stadium and all the way back. “It’s hard to see it when you are going through it. But all those characteristics I picked up from my mom and dad and coaches along the way helped guide me to the next thing,” he said. These days, his focus is on recruiting and developing teachers, and helping them thrive in their careers. But he still experiences that rush of elation when he sees a student succeed, and he feels like he just sacked the quarterback before a hometown crowd. “It really goes back to that feeling I had teaching that math lesson,” he says, “those ‘aha’ moments of being able to improve people’s lives.” ◽