From Marshall student to Marshall coach and teacher

Manahan began teaching at John Marshall High School in 2002 and has been on campus teaching for 20 years. Though he’s been here for about two decades, the subjects of his teaching have varied from mainly teaching English.

“Teaching and coaching at Marshall have been great. It’s a lot of hard work, but it’s meaningful and worthwhile in the end,” Manahan said.

He also taught at Eagle Rock High School from 2010 to 2013 and then afterward continued at Marshall. While he was an assistant volleyball coach at Eagle Rock, his team won a girls’ championship. 

Manahan is also a musician. He plays the bassoon and it “turned out to be his ticket to college,” he said.

Manahan started playing the bassoon at L.A. City College in the orchestra and then transferred to UC Santa Barbara, but then went on to attend UCLA and graduate with a bachelor’s in psychology. He earned his master’s in special education with a focus on mindfulness at National University. 

Manahan spoke about the different changes in the school district.

“One improvement the district has made in regards to sports is they provide uniforms for the players to borrow during the season. Back in my day, we had to purchase our uniforms,” he said. 

Over the years certain things in school seemed to stay the same if not better. 

Manahan said that “clubs and sports have stayed consistent.” In the present day, it would seem to be true, with events like Club Rush still being relevant and happening once each semester. Sports offer many opportunities and are consistently active and do a lot more promoting to gain student support.

Both seem to be more active now than they might have been back in the late 1990s. This could be because of more school spirit and students being able to promote events on social media from the various JMHS year accounts (such as jmhs_2023). This in itself is a huge reason why sports and clubs have continued to be a big deal at Marshall and have stayed very consistent over the years.  

Manahan said “schools seem more aware now of cultural differences.” He also shared that the school seems to care and pay closer attention to their students whereas, in the past, the school might’ve not implemented as many security protocols as we have now. 

Manahan wanted to come back to Marshall, and when an opportunity opened for him to get interviewed, he got rehired. He said some teachers that taught here were also once students who attended Marshall with him. He said he considers Marshall High School his home and he is happy to be here and serve the school community.