¡Adiós, Señor Denious!

Since Samuel Denious arrived at Gilman in the fall of 2022, it has been his mission to connect to students and make his impact on this school through his various efforts in varsity hockey, varsity lacrosse, Spanish, and peer education. Though Mr. Denious has loved his time working for the Gilman staff, he has decided to take his expertise elsewhere. Mr. Denious plans to step away from teaching for a little while and journey out west. He will continue as a fly fishing guide in Wyoming this summer as he did last summer. He plans afterwards to become an emergency medical technician and work on the slopes in Colorado. Mr. Denious described this work as “something I really enjoy and is really important to me.” 

One important part of Mr. Denious’ journey at Gilman was being a part of the Penn Fellow community. A Penn Fellow is a faculty member at Gilman School and concurrently a master's student at Penn’s graduate school. When asked about his time as a Penn Fellow, Mr. Denious said, “It's been really helpful because in order to complete a lot of the coursework for the program. I've had to kind of get out of my own classroom and get to know the school really well.” 

Modern Language Department chair Matt Zealand reflected on Mr. Denious’ presence in the department, remarking, “Mr. Denious has been a wonderful member of Gilman, and, despite the fact that he's a Penn fellow, he has become fully integrated into our Modern Languages Department. He has wonderful contributions during our meetings about curriculum about other ongoing issues in the department. And he's been a stalwart teacher, teaching multiple sections… I think he will have a lasting impact on what we do in the Modern Languages Department.” 

Throughout his two years teaching and coaching at Gilman, his presence as a coach and teacher has been very meaningful in this community. Walton Staley ’26, a Spanish student and hockey player under Mr. Denious said, “He brought a lot of passion and energy to practices and more importantly the games. I think when I think about Mr. Denious, all I remember is just the passion that he brought in on the bench and he always was making sure that there was energy and keeping the boys going.” 

Though Gilman is sure to miss such a high-impact educator, we wish Señor Denious buena suerte out west, Señor!