Scobie Puchtler —Teaching Staff

Scobie Puchtler (he/him) was born in Thailand and raised in Laos and Alaska, prior to his family getting really serious about moving in order to kick start his stepfather’s science career. At this point Scobie attended four public high schools, from Florida to New Hampshire, before earning an Art & Design degree from Yale. Post-college, Scobie lived briefly in Brooklyn, New York as a woodworker, before finally settling in Seattle, where he co-founded a high-tech kite manufacturing company that still sells kites all over the world. These days, Scobie’s experiencing mild disbelief that this will be his 14th year on the PSCS teaching staff.

Scobie is in love with wings, from the flight mastery of barn swallows, to the possibilities of electric aviation. His current flying machine is a high-performance, customized, back-country aircraft, that recently took him— and his 13-year-old son—on a trip through British Columbia and all over Alaska, landing and camping on riverbanks and tundra-covered mountain ridges.

Scobie is a writer, artist, inventor, maker, musician, and communicator with a deep belief in human development, human healing, and human connection. He delights in sharing his life’s many connections with the school. Just one example is having twice co-facilitated a Holocaust History intensive with his mother in law, a professor of history at San Francisco State University and Stanford.

Over the years, Scobie has offered instruction in weight training, geometry, writing, storytelling, aviation, origami, contraption-making, literature, and drawing. He’s coached students to victory in structural engineering competitions, helped them become better musicians, built boats with them, and guided them through courses focused on human experience from addiction to adoption.

Scobie lives happily in North Seattle with his wife of over 20 years, Sarah, their son Brayden (a PSCS student), and two cat friends, Shade and Salem. If the sky is open and you have a few hours to spare, he’d leave home in a heartbeat to take you flying!

B.A. Art and Design, Yale College