Scott Nyary
District EL Coordinator / Lead ESL Teacher / Title III Coordinator / School Bus Driver
(601) 264-6724 ext. 4864

Hello! I am Scott Nyary (pronounced "knee-are-ee", stress on 2nd syllable). I have been working in the ESL field (English as a Second Language) for over 25 years. I have been in the Lamar County School District for 22 years and since 2009 have been the Coordinator of the ESL Program, which has as its main responsibility to help ensure the linguistic & academic success of the district's English Learner (EL) students. These students learned a language other than English as their first language and are learning English in our schools with ESL support. Although my current job covers our entire school district, this year my office has moved to Bellevue Elementary School after being located at Longleaf Elementary for the last 9 years. I am very proud of the team of ESL teachers and paraprofessionals that we have in Lamar County Schools, and many consider us to be one of the leading programs in the state of Mississippi.

Prior to working in Lamar County, I taught ESL at the English Language Institute at the University of Southern Mississippi for 1 year, and before that, I was a professor of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) at the Colegio de Estudios Superiores de Administración (CESA) in Bogota, Colombia, in South America. At the time, this institution was one of the top 3 business schools in Latin America.

I have a Bachelor of Arts degree in anthropology and a Master of Arts in Teaching Languages (MATL) degree, both from Southern Miss. I am licensed in Mississippi to teach both ESL and Spanish (K-12), and I frequently serve as an English-Spanish interpreter and translator for our school district. In the summer of 2018 I obtained a Commercial Driver License and have since been driving school buses as a 2nd job, so I am also an employee in the LCSD Transportation Department.

Prior to my studies at Southern Miss in Hattiesburg, I studied for 2 years at Mississippi Gulf Coast Junior College, Jefferson Davis Campus in Gulfport. (This was right after graduating from Biloxi High School in 1985.) There I studied business administration and then criminal justice.

Then, just when I was looking for something different, the Navy recruiter called, and I enlisted. I was off to boot camp in the summer of 1987 and then Airman Apprentice School. I was then assigned to the amphibious assault ship, USS Belleau Wood (LHA-3), homeported in San Diego, CA. For nearly two years I worked in Belleau Wood's V-4 Division...the aviation fuels division, and I got to experience life at sea, life in the shipyards, and being deployed to the Western Pacific. One of the best things was getting paid to actually visit some foreign ports and countries: Okinawa, Japan; Subic Bay and Manila, Philippines; Pohang and Pusan, South Korea; Hong Kong (when still a British colony); and Sydney and Brisbane, Australia. Back in the U.S. I also got to visit Pearl Harbor and Honolulu, Hawaii; San Francisco, Long Beach, and numerous places in California; and Seattle and Bremerton, Washington. And this was only during the 2 years I spent on active duty! Afterward, I spent another 6 years in the Naval Reserve.

When I came home to Mississippi after active duty, I got a job at the Gulfport/Biloxi Regional Airport driving fuel trucks, fueling and servicing airlines and other aircraft, towing aircraft, etc. Occasionally in this job you'd run into some famous people. Hank Williams Jr. greeted me as he walked into our hangar after flying in to do a concert. Another time I had to run to open a broken gate for ABC Newsman Sam Donaldson who had come to try and interview Biloxi's corrupt mayor at the time. Governor Ray Mabus once shook my hand before boarding his plane. I also refueled Donald Trump's GulfStream jet when he came to Mississippi to consider investing in Gulfport's Marine Life attraction. Finally, the last one I remember is when President George H.W. Bush visited the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Air Force One taxied right past me while I was refueling a small plane...a huge, black SUV followed right behind the President's plane with the back doors open and armed Secret Service agents in clear view!

My wife, Amparo, is from Bogota, Colombia and is the assistant ESL teacher at Oak Grove Elementary School. We have two kids, Tony (who is a recent accountancy graduate from Ole Miss) and Amy (a sophomore at Ole Miss majoring in psychology). In my free time, I enjoy reading (fiction and non-fiction), watching movies (and watching the crew of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax make fun of old B-movies!). I enjoy almost anything related to history or pre-history (articles, shows, visiting historical sites, etc.). I love many kinds of music, but some favorite artists include the Eagles and earlier country-rock groups, especially Poco, and the music of Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman when they played together in the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers. I also love the blues of Robert Cray and the eclectic talents of Prince, and the ballads of Teena Marie still give me goosebumps! Among newer musical artists I love Little Tybee and Miriam Speyer. I almost forgot to mention that I also like to play the guitar a bit (mostly for stress relief!), but I can't read music and can only play a few songs.