Dave Whitson on punk music, pilgrimage, and parting ways with CGS | Humans of Catlin Gabel
By George Pritchard ‘23
CGS Social Studies Teacher Dave Whitson
“If I can make one comparison between me and Michael Jordan, it's that we can nurse the hell out of a grudge. If I think you’re questioning me, I will work so hard to shove it down your throat.”
Dave Whitson, a social studies teacher at Catlin Gabel School (CGS), is one of the most fascinating people on the CGS campus. He usually keeps to himself, briskly walking to and from his office in Lower Library to the Dant House. But long before Whitson arrived on Honey Hollow Farm, he was born in Fofana, California.
Whitson and his family moved around when he was a child, until settling in Seattle from 5th grade onward. He played soccer and baseball, and starting in high school, picked up the sport of ultimate frisbee, one he has played ever since. Alongside his schooling and sports, Whitson worked at the University of Washington when he was in high school.
“My mom was a University librarian,” Whitson said, “so, thanks to nepotism, she got jobs for all her kids.”
Despite having a busy youth life, Whitson devoted many hours to punk music.
“It was Seattle, and the grunge movement had just become national. Bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam were now at the national level, and what that meant was you had a really thriving music scene throughout all of the city.”
Whitson started going to shows when he was around 14 years old, often with his older brother. He then began writing and publishing a small magazine about punk, and booked punk shows as well. His punk career even took him to an unexpected place: The stage.
“I had a group of friends where there was actually some musical talent… I had none, so I did vocals, and that's how I became a vocalist…The second band got to the point where we did a west coast tour and a U.S tour, released a couple CDs and a couple 7 inch records.”
Whitson has not publicly released the names of his bands.
However, his proudest moment from his work in punk music came on the legal side. In 1985, the city of Seattle enacted the “Teen Dance Ordinance,” a law restricting youth from attending and participating in concerts. After failed attempts at lobbying to overturn the law, Whitson and his friend co-wrote a new law themselves and sent it into the city.
“One night, my friend and I just said ‘screw it, we’re just going to write the law that we want to have.’ We pulled together statutes from 20 different cities and created a Frankenstein-law to legalize youth music in Seattle. Ultimately, it became the foundation of the law that would get passed.”
Their law, which was published as the “All-ages Dance Ordinance,” is still in place today, meaning concert-going youth in Seattle have Dave Whitson to thank.
He stayed close to home for college, attending the University of Washington, and working fulltime as a teaching assistant for one of his professors.
“As a freshman, I was TA-ing a class with a bunch of sophomores and juniors in it… they didn’t realize I was a freshman though. I’ve basically looked 30 all my life.”
Even before Whitson worked as a teaching assistant, he knew it was something he wanted to do in the future, but not for the reasons most teachers point to.
“I realized teaching offered me three things. The opportunity to always keep getting smarter…The opportunity to perform. I always enjoyed performing and on some level teaching is performance. And the third thing was summers off. I wanted time and there’s not a lot of jobs where you get time.”
“I wasn’t thinking at all about students. I thought that I was just going to have to suffer through the fact the job involved working with young people. I figured I could endure that because of the three things that looked good.”
Undoubtedly, Whitson’s primary passion and claim to fame is walking, his method of transportation to and from work. After graduating from college, Whitson spent most of a year abroad sightseeing. However, to cap off his travels, he embarked on the Camino de Santiago, an ancient network of pilgrim trails that come together at the remains of Saint James in Northwest Spain.
“I figured it would be the best way at that point to experience history. To be on a historic trail and operate like those who were there 800 years ago… as someone who was going to be a history teacher, I thought it would be a really immersive way to experience the world.”
For over 15 years, Whitson focused on walking along the Camino de Santiago. He led many groups of students on pilgrimages in Spain, Italy and France, including students from CGS. These walks are all over 500 miles in length, and take multiple weeks to complete.
Whitson also has his own podcast titled “The Camino Podcast,” in which he discusses stories of the trail with those who have walked it. He has also written guide books on the Camino route in France and Spain.
“There's a rhythm to doing it,” Whitson said, in regards to his rationale for walking. “There’s a pacing to life that feels very satisfying. You are moving at a pace that is conducive to thinking. Your mind is working at peak creativity.”
Whitson also touched on the religious aspect of walking pilgrimages. Despite being secular, he still finds value in walking through ancient places of worship and ruins with deep religious ties.
“Something that has become very clear to me is that people who are religious are, on the whole, happier, and a big part of that is community. When you are part of a religious group, you are grounded in a community that connects you to other people, which is at the root of sustained happiness for all of us.”
“I’m at the point now where I’m envious of people who have fully developed belief and faith in the community they are grounded in. And I think I throw myself into the community aspect of Catlin Gabel because I see the value in that…I think the skepticism [towards religion] I have is wired too deep inside of me though.”
In Jan. 2023, Whitson published a new book titled Pilgrimage: A Medieval Cure for Modern Ills, in which he undergoes the complex task of explaining his motivations behind pilgrimage. He goes in depth about the history of pilgrimages, and the role they’ve played in his life.
Whitson continues to walk pilgrimages in Europe, most recently in France during the summer of 2022. In 2019 though, he set his sights on a new challenge: Walking across the United States of America.
Whitson took a leave of absence from teaching at CGS to attempt to walk coast to coast. Despite going on long walking trips for nearly two decades at this point, Whitson largely avoided walking in his own nation, primarily due to his lack of interest in our history. However, his mindset began to shift after polarization and divisiveness increased.
“I started to wonder if I was failing on some fundamental level of citizenship…to what degree did pilgrimage just become a route of escapism,” Whitson said. “I should really at some point walk in the U.S. A place where I’m fluent in the language and I’m invested in the things people are talking about. It’ll be a good place to reckon with my identity.”
Whitson embarked on his journey in the fall of 2019. He planned to walk through the Midwest twice, first from Cincinnati to Denver in the fall, and then all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific in the spring/summer. He completed the first part of his walk in the fall, and then made it back to Cincinnati, before the pandemic stopped him short in the spring of 2020.
The walk opened Whitson’s eyes to the reality of the country. He is planning on writing a book about the experience of walking across the nation.
“It was good and it’s sad,” Whitson said, about what he noticed. “You see the challenges that exist in so many parts of this country and you recognize why there is a lot of anger and why people feel desperate for acknowledgement.”
Whitson came to CGS in the fall of 2011. He began as a history teacher, but in 2015, he became the director of the Palma Scholars Program, a small group of high achieving student-athletes in the CGS Upper School. This experience leading Palma has been an incredible one for Whitson.
“You get autonomy. You get room to be as creative as you want to be. You get to teach classes about whatever you want to teach. You even get to pick some of the students you work with.”
“I couldn't ask for anything more in terms of being in one place and building those relationships over a longer period of time.”
Whitson has gotten to create his own elective, lead multiple pilgrimages with CGS students, and design his own curriculum for the Palma Seminar.
Despite his personal and professional successes at CGS, next year will be his final year teaching here.
He will pass off the Palma Scholars Program to a new director, and take time to consider what he wants to do in his future. He plans to complete his walk across the United States, resuming from the place it was paused three years ago, and after that, walk from the northernmost part of Italy, all the way to the southern coast.
“The reality is, I’m at a point where I don’t think I can fail at Catlin Gabel,” Whitson said, explaining his decision to depart the school. “There’s no fear. You have to have the possibility of failure to really be able to meaningfully grow and challenge yourself.”
Whitson, who is in the midst of his 11th year at CGS, reflected back on the areas of growth and strengths of the school.
“We have to diversify the staff. We’ve made a ton of progress in the past 12 years in diversifying the student body. Students need to have adults in their lives that look like them and have a shared background with them, and we have not done that as well as we need to.”
Whitson also touched on the community aspect of CGS.
“We have not come all the way back from COVID. We’re less charitable. We’re thinner skinned. We just aren’t all the way back…For a lot of us, we came out of COVID and continued to self-isolate in certain ways. And I am a big believer in that community and social connection is the cure.”
“If you want to make the argument that Catlin Gabel is worthwhile, it's not about the education, it’s not about anything else, it’s about what it can offer in terms of community. We’re at a moment where community here is shakier than it’s been for years.”
“At our best, community is what makes [CGS] work. You know everyone and you are known. It still is the central defining aspect of this school. But it’s vulnerable.”
Community is clearly the core of what Whitson values in life. From punk, to pilgrimages and his time at CGS, he has worked to better the wide variety of communities he’s been a part of.