He’s taught for years — now he’ll learn how to lead a classroom

“Joining the MALT program is the formal step towards bringing myself into that high school setting and continuing to teach what I love, analytics and business, but through math."

For some people, education is a means to an end — how they discover their career or build upon their skills to advance in their field.   For others, education defines who they are and shapes who they will become. For Omeed Selbe '28, the call to education began at age 13 while tutoring other students and it became the “nagging voice” that led him to University of Redlands.

Selbe spent almost a decade teaching adults analytics and operations — first to graduate students, then Ph.D. students in the classroom, then later as a mentor at the corporate level. Throughout that time, he couldn't shake the feeling that what he was teaching could work well, if not better, for a younger audience.

"The theme of my career is that a lot of the complexity that we teach in universities, if delivered properly, is actually received well at the high-school level," he said.

Though determined to help shape young minds, Selbe was held back by one fear.

“The one thing about teaching that always intimidated me, if I were to become a high school teacher, was that I'm not a good disciplinarian,” he said. “I always had this fear of entering an absolute zoo of a classroom and not knowing how to manage it.”

That all changes this fall, as Selbe steps into a School of Education classroom, not as an educator, but as a student in the Master of Arts in Education: Learning and Teaching Mild/Moderate Support Needs/Single Subject Track dual credential program.

When the timing is right

Selbe’s hesitation about classroom management began to shift in his current role as area manager at Amazon, where he oversees inbound operations at a large distribution facility in the Inland Empire.

“The group that I manage can sometimes be challenging and I run a team of 100,” he said. “I’ve come to think, ‘All right, if I can do this, then I can handle 30 at a time.’”

Pairing that instinct with formal training felt like the right next step. In addition to wanting to teach high school math, Selbe is drawn to supporting students with special needs.

“Redlands offers the mild-to-moderate support-needs dual credential, which I can pair with the math credentialing,” he said. “I've always had a gift for connecting with neurodivergent students and have done well tutoring students on the spectrum.”

Finding the right fit

Selbe doesn't want to just learn how to teach high school students’ math — he wants to learn it somewhere that can support the specific kind of teacher he hopes to become.

“Joining the MALT program is the formal step towards bringing myself into that high school setting and continuing to teach what I love, analytics and business, but through math,” he said.

For Selbe, the “nagging voice” has finally brought him to a University of Redlands classroom where he’ll learn how to impact the lives he’s been determined to serve.

Discover Learning and Teaching at Redlands.