Scott Dion is a well-known and appreciated math teacher here at the high school. Dion has been an educator for 22 years, 10 of them here at SHHS. Students here will typically see him wandering the halls interacting with students and staff with a chuckle and smile. One of Dion’s strengths as an educator is his ability to maintain a sense of youth, which allows him to relate to his students and support and encourage them in their learning.
For Dion, family is essential. He has three kids, all below the age of 10, Camden, Jaxon, and Delaney. His primary goal as a parent is to “raise good kids.” In addition, Dion stressed the importance of keeping them active every day. He said his children would describe him as strict, but would also say he’s the “fun dad” who plays with them outside and helps them with their sports.
Diving deeper into his family life, Dion has been happily married for 10 years to his wife whom he met teaching at Forest Park Middle School. He explains their first encounter as her walking in front of him through the hallway wearing a green mohair sweater that reminded him of Kermit the Frog. He approached her and said to her in a Kermit accent “Hi ho Kermit the frog here!” After that, she immediately sparked interest even though she was with someone else at the time.
“Rizzed her up with that one,” he said while playing an audio clip of Kermit the Frog.
Among family members, Dion said he is closest to his dad. He described his dad as an older version of himself and one of the few people who can keep up with him in outdoor activities. The elder Dion, as he described him, is a 70-year-old active fisherman who loves the outdoors, watches South Park, and knows who Cardi B is.
“He’s him,” Dion said.
Teaching runs in the Dion family. Those who have worked for a while at the high school know that his mother, Cathy Dion, used to be the math department chair and that his grandmother was a home economics teacher at the middle school. His mom still works within the district as a MCAS coordinator and tutor. She actually tried to deter Dion from working here when he was initially interested in teaching, telling him he would not want to be an educator.
Dion’s interest in teaching was sparked when he was offered an internship in college for 15 credits. His job was to raise goldfish and koi in a fish tank at North Kingston Farm School, but eventually, he found himself helping kids with their math work, building teepees, fishing in ponds, and digging holes which led to him realizing that this was something he truly wanted to pursue. As a result, he began taking educational elective courses to learn more about the job of a teacher.
Dion started college at the University of Rhode Island in 1998, majoring in aquaculture and fisheries, which led to an opportunity to clean elderly people’s fish tanks in eastern Mass over the summer. Dion was reluctant at first to take on this work, but his dad told him to pursue it because he’d likely be surrounded by smart people and that could lead to interesting possibilities. A couple of years later, the people who ran the tank cleaning business invited Dion onto their boat. He described the boat as “huge and beautiful and definitely very expensive.”
The name of the business was “Fish Frenzy,” and it ended up being very successful, as the company ended up getting cleaning contracts at places that included Foxwoods, Mohegan Sun, and various Walmarts across New England. Dion said the owners of the business are now sitting on an island somewhere after selling their company, while he’s sitting in classrooms.
“[Hash-tag] regerts,” Dion said, lamenting on this missed opportunity.
Dion obviously still loves being a teacher enough considering that after attending URI for his undergraduate in aquaculture and fisheries, he picked up teaching with just that degree. His first teaching job was actually as a physical education/health teacher.
In 2013 Dion participated in a 2-year program for his master’s degree at Springfield College. Since then he taught in a variety of schools including Pace Alternative, Forest Park, and Kennedy Middle School prior to coming here. Dion said he considers achieving his master’s degree to be his most difficult achievement, as he had two infant children at the time.
Regarding his free time, Dion enjoys spending time with his kids and playing sports as a way to keep them active. When he gets the chance, he enjoys going fishing and especially favors spearfishing and also metal detecting. Additionally, he said he often finds himself “killing student lingo,” and sees this as a hobby of sorts.
As for current political events and happenings, Dion took the opportunity to say “[hash-tag] Free Karen Read,” a reference to the 43-year-old woman who was accused of backing her SUV into her boyfriend – Boston police officer John O’Keefe – and leaving him for dead during a blizzard in 2022. Some of the events the night O’Keefe was killed are in question, which has resulted in people like Dion believing she was framed and is the victim of a coverup. Read’s attorneys say O’Keefe was fatally beaten inside the home of another Boston police offer who then planted his body outside in the snow.
Some members of the school community may be aware that Dion recently endured a mini-stroke. His symptoms began showing up a couple of weeks ago during his B-block class when he was visually seeing geometric figures and rainbows until his left eye completely blacked out. High school Principal Elizabeth Wood encouraged him to leave school during Community period and seek medical attention. Dion went to the Cooley Dickinson Hospital Emergency Room, where they declared him a mini-stroke victim and admitted him to the hospital. He ended up staying for just over 24 hours. The cause of the stroke was an artery in his brain that somehow got temporarily blocked with plaque. Dion expressed this experience as scary and considering he has 3 little kids, said this was not his time to die.
Since his discharge, Dion is now “back on his grind” and doing a lot better.
