Dave Monti is the kind of teacher that students remember.
Monti is retiring this year after 33 years of teaching and doing a host of other things at Riverside Brookfield High School. His impact on students and the school is vast. While he has spent his career mostly teaching Biology and Zoology, those who know him consider him to be one of the most dedicated and intense teachers ever to set foot in an RB classroom.
His range of energy and activity has been astounding: teacher, coach, club sponsor, head of Riverside Brookfield Educational Foundation, union leader, critic and concerned citizen.
Whether it was students who said that he introduced them to high school in freshman Biology – and set them up for future success by teaching them how to study and work hard – or seniors who took his Zoology class – which Monti created from scratch – they remember his infectious energy and passion for his subject and his concern for them as individuals.
Former students of his might be surprised to learn that he didn’t immediately set out to be a teacher although it seemed like a natural career for him.
Near the end of his senior year at De La Salle High School in 1985, Monti was voted “most likely to become a teacher” by his senior classmates. But Monti initially planned to be a zoologist and researcher.
“I wanted to work with sharks and I wanted to work with whales,” Monti recalled during an interview in his classroom.
In the summer of 1989 Monti had just graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in Ecology, Ethnology and Evolution, which Monti said is just a fancy way of saying zoology. He had secured a research internship helping top experts study killer whales off the coast of Washington. But the internship didn’t begin until August so he was looking for a summer job. His father, a science teacher at De La Salle, told him that De La Salle was looking for a summer school teacher for Biology and Algebra and since he was a college graduate, he was qualified. Monti said why not, applied, got hired and taught summer school without any formal training in teaching.
“Once I started teaching that summer of ‘89 I knew that this is what I wanted to do,” Monti said.
He had always enjoyed tutoring, which he did throughout high school and college. When he was just a third grader who was learning the violin in school, one day at home he taught his sixth-grade brother how to play the violin, astounding his mother.
Monti, who grew up in Cicero and then lived in Berwyn until moving to Brookfield in 2008, returned home after the nearly five-month whale research internship shortly before Christmas in 1989 and immediately began taking classes to become certified to teach. He also started substitute teaching, mostly at schools in Berwyn. He almost didn’t make it to RB.
In September 1990 while taking classes to earn his teaching certification Monti needed to spend 40 hours observing teachers for a class. Since he was living with his family in Berwyn at the time, he decided to do it at RB, which was just a short drive away. But when he called the school the Friday before his observation week to confirm that everything was still on, a secretary told him there was a problem and the science department couldn’t accommodate him. Monti said it didn’t have to be science. While the secretary was on the phone Bill Jirkovsky, then social studies department chairman, walked into the secretary’s office, got the gist of the conversation and spoke to the secretary and said he would handle it. So the following Monday Monti came to RB and observed seven teachers teach. He was wowed by the excellent teaching that he saw.
“I remember going home and telling my dad and saying, ‘Hey I want to student teach here and this is where I want to be,’” Monti said.
Monti soon began subbing at RB and student taught there in 1992. As usual with Monti, even his student teaching was beyond the norm. Since he worked with two teachers Monti student taught six classes instead of the normal five.
Monti was hired to teach mostly Biology at RB in 1992 and has spent his entire career at the school. His two children, Aaron and Alyssa, graduated from RB.
In 2003 Monti created his Applied Zoology class. He takes his classes to Brookfield Zoo about 15 times a year. They also visit the Shedd Aquarium.
“Probably the most passionate teacher I’ve ever known,” said Tom Fuller, an RB English teacher who has taught at RB for 31 years. “He accepts nothing less than the best from his kids. He has incredibly high expectations and his love of science is unmatched.”
Students who have taken a Monti class agree.
“He’s really passionate about his job and what he teaches,” said newly graduated Emily Munoz, who took Zoology with Monti this year. “It’s really nice knowing that he cares about his job and the students and I’m lucky enough to have him as an educator. There’s a lot of teachers who don’t really care but he’s really on point with everything he does.”
Monti is a demanding teacher with high expectations.
“Sometimes you need that to put students on the right track and stuff, but I’m good with that,” Munoz said. “He can be strict sometimes. He can definitely have a little edge on him.”
Isabel Oliver, also a new graduate, agreed.
“Monti is a really good teacher,” said Oliver who also took Zoology with Monti this year. “I mean he does give tough love but he definitely cares about us and when he teaches what he does he’s very passionate about it and he gets so excited and you can see him light up.”
Dylan Zec, who graduated last week, had Monti for Honors Biology as a freshman and Zoology this year and also played for four years on the chess team that Monti coaches. When Zec was unmotivated and struggling in his classes this year with a bad case of senioritis, Monti’s relentless enthusiasm, encouragement and nagging coaxed Zec out of it.
“He managed to really inspire me out of senioritis,” Zec said. “He’s a wonderful teacher. I think he’s hard but fair and he cares for every one of his students which I’ve learned, especially through this year. He wants everyone to succeed and tries very hard to make sure that happens.”
When Zec’s father died during his freshman year, Monti went to his funeral, one of two of Zec’s teachers who did so.
“He’s made a massive impact on my life and a bunch of other peoples, and I see him as almost a father figure which I imagine is the same thing for a lot of people,” Zec said.
Monti loves teaching.
“After my wife and my children it’s the thing I love most,” Monti said.
He admitted he can be a demanding teacher.
“I work kids hard because I think that’s important,” Monti said.
If students complain, he challenges students to name a job at which you can be lazy and successful.
Monti also has fun and relates well to students and cares about them as people. He’s not afraid to make a spectacle of himself. Sometimes he would dress up in an RB jersey, tights and high socks and run around at Homecoming assemblies.
He immediately became head wrestling coach at RB and did that for eight years. As with everything else he did that full bore, getting on the mat with his wrestlers to demonstrate technique and wrestling with them suffering black eyes, a hair line fracture and torn cartilage in the process.
After his kids were born he stepped down as wrestling coach to spend more time with his then young children but it wasn’t long before a student asked him to supervise students playing chess after school in the library because they were told a teacher had to be there. Soon Monti was the sponsor of the newly created chess club and coach of the newly formed chess team.
Following in the footsteps of his mentor, Michael Koch-Weser, a science teacher at RB who died last year, Monti also took over sponsorship of the Ecology Club. He organized many workdays pulling out buckthorn and other invasive species in local forest preserves.
Ecology has always been a passion for Monti. One of his proudest moments came in late 2023 when a then current student, Maiana Nelson and two RB alumnae, Katie Maxwell and Christine Dragisic, all attended the UN’s COP 28 climate conference in Dubai. All were members of the Eco Club.
Maxwell, a 2013 RB graduate who earlier this month received a master’s degree in environmental management from Duke University, has, like many former students, kept in touch with Monti over the years.
“Mr. Monti has an incredible passion for the environment and getting people engaged in environmental work and I certainly have developed my own passion,” Maxwell said. “He inspires in students the ability to figure out what it is that they care about when it comes to the environment and academic pursuits.”
Monti also was very active in the RB teachers union, called the Riverside Brookfield Educational Association. He served as union president for three different one-year terms and was a union officer for 26 consecutive years.
As a union leader and just as a concerned teacher and resident of the district, Monti sometimes bumped heads with administrators.
“If he thought something was wrong he’s going to call you on it,” Fuller said.
Unlike many teachers Monti was never afraid to speak out.
Late last year Monti made a public comment at a school board meeting accusing the administration of violating state and school policies by not adequately warning students and staff about fumes from a sealant applied on the East Gym floor in November. Monti said he got headaches from the fumes.
“Dave wasn’t speaking for himself there,” Fuller said. “We had kids who went home sick, we had other staff members who felt wildly sick and ended up going home but they didn’t want to speak out for fear of repercussions. Dave never cared about that. He said it’s the right thing to do.”
In 2019 Monti twice made public comments at school board meetings calling on the school board to use $1 million in reserve funds to hire a few more teachers and other staff to reduce class sizes.
Out of the public eye he has not hesitated to speak up in faculty meetings or meetings with administrators. He has been an advocate for students, for the union and for support staff.
“My parents raised me to always stand up for what you thought was right,” Monti said.
Some may feel that he at times gets out of his lane but he didn’t care.
“I have gone to bat for people who aren’t union members because it’s the right thing to do and most administrators don’t like that,” Monti said.
When Monti goes off on something some will say, somewhat bemusedly, that’s just Monti being Monti.
Monti and Kevin Skinkis, RB’s superintendent of schools, have had their differences while being respectful of each other in public.
“Dave Monti was an awesome employee for the district,” Skinkis told the Landmark. “He was a consummate professional who truly was committed to the students of RB, not only in the classroom but to their experiences outside of the classroom with coaching and sponsoring clubs and activities and he will be missed.”
Monti believes that the current administration at RB is too focused on finances. He mused at his retirement dinner what it would be like if the caliber of the school’s administrators matched that of the faculty.
“This is a great school but it’s not as great as it should be and it’s not as great as it once was, and that breaks my heart because I was here when we were not too great and then we made all these changes,” Monti said.
He thinks that standards and expectations have diminished.
“In general, I think things are too lax,” Monti said. “I think expectations, we’ve lowered our expectations in a lot of different ways. And I think when you lower the bar kids don’t hit the bar.”
Retirement will be an adjustment for Monti who is 57.
“I’ll stay busy,” Monti said. “I have one gear and it’s on. I’m always on. My mom used to yell at me. She says you’re not teaching 24 hours a day and I looked at her and said, ‘Yeah mom I am.’”
He will probably be an assistant chess coach at some other school and might do some chess officiating.
He is thinking of doing some teaching and work at Brookfield Zoo or the Little Red School House. He might even volunteer at a veterinarian’s office.
“I’d like to work with little kids and get them excited about nature and the outdoors,” said Monti.
And he will continue to write, sing and record music with his band Surly Dave and the Wallabies. They’ve already recorded three albums. He might even venture out in public to perform something that to date he has only done at the RBEF Foundation telethon.
“It’s a great outlet for me,” Monti said. “I haven’t written too many happy songs. It’s usually after something bad happens and I’m either sad or angry and then I write a song.”
For the immediate future Monti will stay on as president of the board of the RREF but his time there is likely numbered. At his retirement dinner he urged other faculty members to step up and serve.
Molly Castor, who served one year on the board of the RBEF and had Monti for Biology as a freshman at RB in the 1999-2000 school year, is concerned about the future of the RBEF which suffered a big blow when long time board member and former Landmark columnist Joanne Kosey died in 2023.
“I don’t know how it will survive without him,” Castor said.
Graduation on May 23 was likely especially emotional for Monti. Not only was it his last, but three seniors whose parents Monti taught at RB are also graduating so it will be full circle moment.
Elizabeth Kos, a Riverside village board member, and her husband, Craig, had Monti when he was student teaching at RB and her son, Tom Kos, had Monti for Zoology this year. Monti posed with Kos in her cap and gown when she graduated from RB in 1995 and Kos planned to get a similar shot of Monti with her son Tom this year.
“He was a really fun teacher,” Kos said. “He made class fun. It was super challenging but fun because it was interesting to learn about all the things because he’s so passionate about everything he teaches. His enthusiasm is catching.”