Though they may have never met each other, Peter Neumann and Victoria Smith already have one thing in common.

Ten minutes past seven. Neumann glances around him, students have begun filing in. He sees the excited first day faces and chatter.

Twenty minutes past seven. As Smith does one more check over her things, the room becomes more crowded as students search for their seats and look for their friends.

Thirty minutes past seven. This is it. The bell rings as they both begin to introduce themselves to their classes.

“One of my career goals was to come back here,” Neumann said. “I wanted to coach swimming with the coach who taught me everything. So my goal was to come back here and coach for her, and to work here.”

Smith student taught at Cinco and then taught for two years in an international school in Abu Dabi, while Neumann has taught at many schools in the Texas area. Yet nothing compared to coming back to his alma mater.

“I was very excited,” Neumann said. “But I was also nervous because I wanted to live up to the expectations of the people here that already knew me, and were fighting so hard to get me to come here. But it was mostly exciting to come back and relive what I did, but on the other side.”

For Smith deciding to teach was a tough choice as she thought about all the things it could not provide. But in the end she “just couldn’t fight it.”

“Part of the reason I like teaching is because it changes every day,” Smith said. “Yes, every day I’m teaching but it’s different, and the students are different every day. Everyone manages to have a good time in the class. That’s really my goal, to get everyone to the point where even if they don’t love English as much as I do, they are having fun in English and learning something.”

Neumann was a varsity swimmer and continued his swimming career in college, even joining other aquatic sports such as water polo.

“I love it,” Neumann said. “I find it [coaching] a lot more fun than actually swimming. Getting to yell at people is a lot better than getting yelled at. But just watching them improve and get better at something. Watching that little light bulb go on inside, is really rewarding.”

Throughout his whole experience at Cinco, Neumann learned one thing that he carried throughthe rest of his life.
“The biggest lesson I took from Cinco Ranch was basically my level of standards and expectations,” Neumann said. “The workload and the expectations that a lot of my teachers had of me was challenging, but it also kind of lead to why my expectations are so high now.”