Kordick has played many roles throughout his life, but teaching is the one he’ll remember the most. His first year of teaching started at Berkeley High School in 1998, where he taught for five years. He will never forget the “unbelievable group of students” he had his first year teaching. Specifically, one student left a lasting impact on him. His name is Daveed Diggs, who is now famous for playing the roles of Jefferson and Lafayette in the musical production Hamilton.
“I loved him because he was such a socially conscious, cool guy,” he says.
Tom Kordick grew up in Newport Beach, Orange County. He made his journey to the Bay Area when he was 18, fresh out of high school. However, he regularly returns to visit family. “I felt like Northern California was more my style, I just thought this was a better place for me,” Kordick says. His love for teaching was found after graduating from UC-Berkeley, where he majored in Political Science thinking he would become a lawyer. After getting into law school, he soon realized arguing for a living was not his forte.
The kids at Berkeley High had a notable impact on him. Though he was the teacher, he says the students “taught me a huge, huge amount of stuff.” He has a specific memory of a school-run trip he went on with the students. “I went to Cuba my first year with a group of seniors and juniors, that was an amazing experience,” he says.
After finishing teaching at Berkeley High, he took a year off to get back surgery in 2003. The surgery was due to a bad back from playing football in his earlier days. After a year of recovering, he wasn’t so sure if he was going to continue his teaching career. He was planning to work for a friend of his who had a somewhat rough-around-the-edges startup company. “It was a banking startup, I was gonna do sales for him but I don’t think it even came to fruition,” he admits.
The teaching world knew there was more to come for him; a former colleague of his from Berkley High School so happened to be the assistant principal at Davidson Middle School. She told him he had to come down, because he’d love the kids, and so he did. Kordick says in somewhat joyous disbelief, “That was 2004 and now it’s 2025, so it’s been a long time.”
Ironically enough, he believes “middle school is the worst three years of your life.” “There’s no ands, ifs, or buts about it, it’s hideous” he says. Kordick tells kids this all the time, but he also gives them a piece of advice: “all you should do is try and do your best to make it through and get ready for high school.” He hopes to give them a sense of focus and security through the undoubted chaos they will experience in the next three years.
But with this hideousness that comes at the start of middle school also comes the ability to see these kids grow. He says, “Over the years I’ve loved seeing that big jump in maturity between 7th and 8th grade or 8th grade into high school.” He loves getting to see so many amazing kids become even more amazing young adults. “They mature so much and it’s so cool to see.”
Kordick puts it into simple words: middle school is hard, but there is beauty in the struggle. He wants to see them grow, succeed, and get it. That’s what he enjoys most about teaching. “[When] they understand the concept of what I was trying to teach, that’s really cool,” he says.
Kordick’s passion for teaching has led him to build several amazing relationships with students he’s taught over the years. He says he has “had some wonderful kids who have left lasting impressions on me [him].” Some that he’s friends with to this day, even though they’re grown with their own families and lives.
While teaching, he also juggled coaching football at San Rafael high school. In 2013, a fellow teacher at Davidson, Mr. Causgriff, and he decided to become the new coaches for the junior varsity team. Soon after the head coach for varsity left, Mr. Causgriff took his place. Kordick stayed coaching junior varsity and Mr. Oseguera became his partner in crime for the next ten years until 2023. When asked why he decided to add coaching on top of teaching he says, “I love football and I loved playing in high school.” But it wasn’t just his love for the sport, he was enticed by the fact that he would be coaching the same kids that graduated from Davidson and continued onto high school as freshmen. “It was a really good way to connect with them, help them out, and just share my passion for the game,” he says.
One of his favorite football memories was in his second-to-last year coaching in 2015. They were losing to San Rafael’s rival team- Terra Linda, and eventually would end the game in a loss but what made it so memorable wasn’t the game itself, it was the kids. “One of my players who was special-ed scored a two point conversion,” he shares. “The kids were so fired up they carried him up the field.”
Though he has witnessed many great achievements with his athletes and students, he’s also seen some difficult situations while teaching. The hardest part for him about working with kids is seeing the disparity between those who are blessed with all the opportunities they could think of, and the ones who can barely afford to be going to school. But even for these kids that start out with nothing, they work as hard as the rest. Despite the hard situations he has to witness, he sees “kids that come here, maybe 4th or 5th or 6th grade from Guatemala or El Salvador, Mexico with nothing, no language.” But once they’ve graduated high school and have gotten into these amazing colleges, they end up having wonderful careers. Despite the hardships they experience, he says, “That’s one of the great things.”
During July of 2015, Kordick administered the BELL Program right after obtaining his second masters in administrative leadership, which is what anyone who wants to be an administrator has to obtain. A program had reached out to him from Boston and he decided it was a perfect fit for the issues he wanted to solve at Davidson. This summer school program’s main goal was to close the achievement gap between students who come from lower versus higher income families. He ran this for three years and describes it as being “super academic and all about getting kids caught up or ahead of the curve.” It was a very big deal, and he found joy in helping kids achieve what he knew they were capable of. This program also helped his transition into leaving his teaching career to become an administrator. He ran the program when he was still teaching history but says, “that got me into the experience of running a school.”
With the many careers he has had throughout his adventurous life, being in the classroom is what he remembers and loves the most. He enjoys it much more than admin, “which is basically just cleaning up mess after mess.” But with teaching he says, “the impact is so much greater.” After having been the DMS administrator for a good ten years now, he misses the close connections he was able to have with the 150 kids he was teaching.
In terms of his future, he says he’s got about another two years of administrating at Davidson. After that, he will conclude his 30 years of teaching. Kordick believes 62 is a good age to retire for him and his wife. When he looks back on the numerous careers he has had, he has no doubt that teaching is “a hundred percent, absolutely” the best job out of all.
