If you have ever ventured up to the history wing of Bishop Manogue, you may have interacted with Mr. CJ DeRuyter. If during this interaction he didn’t find some way to incorporate talking about food, philosophy, or the Raiders, did you even really talk to him?
Mr. DeRuyter, or ‘Mr. D’ as most of his students call him, has been a teacher at Bishop Manogue for 5 years. He mainly deals with sophomore and junior students in his both AP and regular World History and United States History classes.
Born in Altus Oklahoma, Mr. D grew up as a military BRAT, meaning his father was in the military and so the family frequently moved around to wherever his father needed to be. Around the end of elementary school, his family settled in the Bay Area and he lived a major part of his youth there, middle through high school. Then for college, Mr. D decided to come to Reno, Nevada and attend UNR. One influence his upbringing had on him was the constant moving around showed him a lot of places. This enabled him to know from experience where he wanted to live himself when he was older, and that favorite place became Reno, Nevada. “I got to kind of chose where I wanted to live because I experienced a lot of places and a lot of different demographics of people and cultures through that,” Mr. D says on why he came to Reno. Another big part of who Mr. D is today is his love of cooking, and this came from his parents lack of that ability. While growing up, Mr. D was never able to experience many good, home-cooked meals. So, he decided he needed to teach himself this ability and make those meals himself. This love for cooking and creating home-cooked meals with love snowballed into a want to share this love with others in the form of an Instagram page, @whatscookingmrd, so now his students and others can see the recipes he creates.
Mr. D follows a pretty routine schedule in his day to day life. On the weekdays, he wakes up quite early. He starts off his mornings with some sort of workout or yoga, then he always does a few minutes of meditation to get in the right mindset for the day. Then, Mr. D arrives at school at least an hour early to get some work done before the school day. Then, he teaches his students for the day and after school gets out he returns home to his wife and Corgi, Finn. He hangs with them, cooks some dinner, and ends his day with a meditation before going to bed pretty early. On weekends, Mr. D enjoys e-bike riding through downtown with his wife and dog or even going up to Virginia City to hang out with his history club.
Mr. DeRuyter considers himself a pretty open book, as he is always willing to share a story about himself. He believes he is a little different at home, a little more quiet, calm, and relaxed unlike his bumping personality at school. Something people may not know is that he is extremely queasy when drawing blood. He can see blood in like cuts or whatever, but the watching of someone drawing his blood out is something he cannot stand. Another thing you may not know is that when he was younger, Mr. D toured with a Screamo band and went from place to place with them while they performed shows and he took photographs.
Mr. D enjoys two main things in his free time, reading and some sort of yoga or meditation or watching cooking shows. These two things, philosophy and food, are things he is very passionate about. His opinions on food stems from his idea that people make very poor decisions when it comes to food and that there is much more power behind it than people realize. Mr. D says this can go in hand with money too and that people make poor decisions this way as well. Another passion of his is philosophy, and currently he is reading a book about essentialism. Essentialism is the idea of only associating with things that are necessary and cutting down on the extreme excess of things so you can focus on what you need. He likes to read this and meditate on it. Another philosophical idea that Mr. D tries to centralize in his life is the idea of not becoming upset over things he cannot control. Understanding what is and what is not in his power helps him to let things go and take life as it comes instead of trying to control everything. “I try not to in any way have a reaction to how people react because I have no control over that. I don’t have control over something in the past or things others do and I generally don’t dread about it.” says Mr. DeRuyter. He is working on becoming more Zen and tranquil about things, even bringing in a Zen Garden for him and his students to use in his classroom to remember that nothing is permanent and everything will change as time goes on.
Mr. DeRuyter is a very wise character with a lot to say about the things he’s passionate about. I can speak from experience when I say, one conversation with him will never fair to brighten your day and put a smile on your face, and maybe you’ll come out with some more knowledge about something really random too.
