90 Seconds with Mr. Jarcho

Q: How did you find Deerfield?

A: I was introduced to Deerfield about 15 years ago when I was a teacher at Vermont Academy. And I got to know Deerfield because I coached soccer against it. In fact, my first ever game that I coached was against Deerfield. But more important than that, a very good friend of mine from childhood is Mr. McVaugh. I knew that he was an hour down the down the road, and so we had been in touch, and almost immediately, when I started Vermont Academy, Tim [Mr. McVaugh] reached out and asked if I wanted to join an indoor soccer league at night, so I would come down every Tuesday night to play on a team that was mostly Deerfield faculty. So Mr. Flaska, Mr. McCraw, Mr. Dancer, Mr. Keller, and a handful of others that have been here for a long time, that’s the sort of the community that I got to know. And so it took about 15 years for me to circle back to Deerfield, but I’m really happy that it happened eventually.

Q: What did you major in in college?

A: I majored in economics with a minor in English literature.

Q: Are you currently reading any books?

A: Yes, I just finished a book called there Are Rivers in the Sky. And just last night I started a collection of short stories by Haruki Murakami. The collection is called First Person Singular, and they are excellent!

Q: Favorite thing so far about Deerfield?

A: This is such a cliche answer, but the community. There are genuinely good people here, and every aspect of my day is interacting with genuine people.

Q: Where do you see yourself in five years?

A: I always hesitate to answer that question, because I like to be open minded to whatever experiences come up in life, but realistically, I see myself here. I think that my wife and I have had a variety of experiences in our adult lives, both together and separately from one another, and this is a community that both of us would be like, “Okay, this feels great. Yeah, I’d like to stay.”

Q: What’s a fun fact about you that people on campus probably wouldn’t know just by looking at you?

A: Given what I teach, probably very few people would guess that I read as much as I do, and one of my favorite things to do with colleagues and students is to trade reading lists or trade book recommendations. So if there’s anything that I would like people to learn about me, it would be that. Come give me your book recommendations.