Ryan has been involved in education for many years, having taught after-school Spanish in elementary schools, to being a full-time second-grade teacher in a bilingual classroom, to teaching adult learners through Community College of Denver, the Metropolitan State University Family Literacy Program, and in the UCD ESL Academy. He studied at the University of the Basque Country in San Sebastian, Spain while attaining his degree in Spanish literature ultimately from the University of Colorado Boulder, and has also gone on to teach two summers at Jiatong University in Xi’an, China. But, through it all he is a Colorado native who keeps returning home to Denver. He knows the Auraria Campus quite well, as he has taught for all three schools, and also attained his teaching license from Metropolitan State University and his master’s in linguistically-diverse education from the University of Colorado Denver.