Chris Carmiencke
(Education Director)
Chris was born and raised in Bend, Oregon as the youngest of two children and was able to cultivate a love of nature, learning, and service. He graduated from Mountain View High School in 1996. After high school, he attended the University of Puget Sound (UPS) for one year, then took a break from UPS to spend one semester living in the mountains east of Ashland where he studied religion, philosophy and literature through a unique program called the Oregon Extension of Houghton College. He returned to UPS for two more semesters before deciding to take a year off of college to live in Massachusetts, and travel in Europe. After this one-year hiatus, he returned to college and earned a BA in English Literature in 2001 from Gordon College in Wenham, MA.
After earning his bachelor’s degree, he moved back to Oregon and spent a year as an Americorp Volunteer working for ACCESS, Inc in Medford, where he met his partner, Krista. He then began working as an Instructional Assistant at Westside Village Magnet School, part of the Bend-La Pine School District. It was a result of this exciting school experience that he decided to get licensed and attended George Fox University where he earned his Masters of Arts in Teaching in 2005.
They moved to Colorado and he taught for 7 years as a Language Arts, Mathematics and Social Studies Teacher for 6th, 7th, and 8th Grade Students in three different middle schools. It was in Colorado that his eldest two sons were born, Marlon in 2010, and Kai in 2012. Shortly after Kai joined the family, they moved to Baker City in northeast Oregon where he taught 6th Grade in a self-contained classroom for 3 years before moving to administration where I was the principal of Baker Middle School for 2 years. It was in Baker City that their third son, Sage, was born in 2015.
In 2017 they moved to Grants Pass where he worked for a year as the Assistant Principal of Rogue River Junior Senior High School, and then three years as the principal of the same school. He enjoys spending time with family, hiking, biking, camping, traveling, enjoying the Redwood Forest, Pacific Ocean and improving their home, yard and garden. His two school-aged sons are in the Bear and Oak Class at Woodland Charter School, and Sage will join Woodland in 2022.