Creativity and passion Flye high. Ceramics teacher of room 406 pedals through class, clay, and everything in between. On the Flye with Mr. Flye. Flyeing through the day. All of these headlines ring true for the bustling days of ceramics teacher Rob Flye (he/him), both during and after school.
“I know everything about a potter’s wheel, but nothing about a steering wheel,” Flye said. Once he arrives at school, Flye prepares lessons and clay for his students. First, he collects clay squeezed out of the pugmill, a machine that processes scraps of clay from the recycling clay bin. The machine grinds and mushes the scraps together, extruding fresh clay, which is then dried the night before his classes so that his students can create ceramic pieces.
At the end of the day, Flye cleans the tables coated in dried remnants of clay and leftover glaze. Afterward, his mind is occupied by a craving for chocolate.
“If I’m lucky, I’ll spend an hour working on my projects, then I’ll eat enough chocolate to feel like going back home, all 10 miles,” Flye said.
With such a full day, some things do not make it into the agenda. For Flye, using a phone is optional.
“If I’m going to do something electronic, I’m usually using a computer. I check the time on the phone. I’ll use it for a nice bubble level for pottery sometimes, to make sure it dries evenly,” Flye said.
He prefers to spend his time elsewhere. Flye’s creative pursuits go well beyond ceramics, feeding on his endless creativity. Recently, he has been working on a project with woodworking and metalworking.
He also enjoys getting outside, photographing, going for hikes and riding his bike. One of his interests that particularly delights students is his baking skills. Every other Friday, he brings in his famous Nutella chocolate cookies.
“He’s really good at making cookies. Yeah, I need his recipe right now, but he never tells us about it,” junior Emma Chadwick (she/her) said.
His talents in the kitchen do not lie solely with baking. Before teaching, he worked as a chef at Chinook’s at Salmon Bay in Seattle’s Fishermen’s Terminal, where he earned the nickname ‘Superfly’. He also worked as a prep cook at the restaurant on top of the Seattle Space Needle. His time at Chinook’s at Salmon Bay was when he developed his Nutella chocolate cookies recipe.
“Every so often, someone would bring in treats to help us survive a shift. One day, someone brought in chocolate chip cookies and I realized I could not bake a good one to save my life, so I changed that,” Flye said.
Flye is also known for his unforgettable teaching style. Fellow art teacher and Scandia advisor Zane Mills (he/him) said he enjoys how Flye creates an interactive learning environment for his students.
“He’s weird. In front of the class, he’ll jump up on the tables,” Mills said. “It’s funny, because with us when he’s not teaching, we’re in here having lunch or a meeting, he’s so quiet and subdued, barely says anything unless you speak to him. So, it’s just fascinating to see him transform in front of students and become like this goofy, wild person.”
Fellow art teacher, Gage Hopkins (he/they), also appreciates Flye’s teaching style. “When they talk about Kintsugi — the art of repairing cracked ceramics with gold — he always dresses up as a samurai,” Hopkins said.
Flye’s unique style also comes through in the way he decorates his classroom. His walls are covered in movie posters of various languages, student and personal art projects, and dried clay. Students often ask about Flye’s fashion inspiration, his T-shirts in particular. When asked, Flye said that he randomly picks things up from whatever he encounters.
“I think it’s one of those things where he kind of settled into what he wants in his general life and aesthetics, and sticks to it pretty well. It’s nice and varied,” Hopkins said.
When astronomy teacher Matthew Coglan off-handedly asked him to improve a lunar mapping project, Flye took it upon himself to completely rebuild it, sculpting entire landscapes with clay and creating custom wood boxes and screws.
“I’ve never met anyone who works as hard as he does, with as much passion, patience and belief in what he’s doing,” Mills said. “He’ll put in twice the number of hours as anybody else. He will work effortlessly and tirelessly in order to make things easier for his students.”
Flye regularly displays his notable passion in many things he does. When faculty gifted him a “You Rock” award made of a broken plastic TJ Maxx trophy with a literal rock glued to the top, Flye ground the rock into a powder to produce a glaze, which he used to glaze a massive, beautiful pot.
“I turned it into a pot not only because it was broken and ugly, but also so I could put a worthwhile reward in it. When I passed it on, I filled it up with cookies and a Starbucks card,” Flye said.
This commitment to brightening the lives of the people around him is reflected not only in his creations but also in the strong teacher-student bonds he creates. Chadwick said it is very easy to feel comfortable while creating ceramic pieces in his class.
“I come into his class every Viking time on Wednesdays because I want to do stuff with ceramics even though I’m not taking the actual class (this semester),” Chadwick said. The warm and relaxing environment of the ceramics studio invites students to unwind.
“I think he makes it a lot easier to just chill there, just relax, to not have to think about anything, to relieve your stress and stuff,” Chadwick said. “Before then, I’d never really experienced a good teacher-student bonding relationship quite like that.”
