June/July 2019 | Staff Spotlight: Tony Cuda

Shaker Heights High School Individuals and Societies teacher Tony Cuda began his working life as a professional bass guitar player, then transitioned to working political campaigns, was a school board member at Cleveland Municipal School District, and then, in his mid-40s, he decided that he wanted to become a teacher. Next January, he’ll retire after 20 years as a Shaker Heights Schools teacher. “As my life went along, I always made new plans, but I never planned it out,” Mr. Cuda says.

He’s not making any plans for retirement, either. Right now, he knows he’ll continue to play in his baseball league, he might dabble in campaigns again and for sure, you’ll be able to catch him on stage, playing in one of his bands.

Read more about Mr. Cuda and his life in politics, music and as a teacher:

You’ve been a musician for your adult life. How long did you play professionally?
I started playing bass guitar in high school when I was at Heights High. After high school, I took some classes at Tri-C and worked, then when I was 23, I went to study music at Berklee College of Music. After that, I played professionally for about 15 years full-time. I still play and right now I’m in four bands. The first is ProgNation, a progressive rock tribute band, I also play in a band called Jazz Cats, I’m in a trio with my brother called CuDa, Schief and CuDa, and an oldies band called City Heat. We play a lot of local venues like Nighttown, the MGM casino and Cain Park.

So after your full-time career in music, you worked on political campaigns?
I did. I went back to school and got a degree in political science from Cleveland State. I worked on a few presidential campaigns, a gubernatorial campaign, an attorney general campaign and a few local campaigns. I also worked an election in England and two in Bosnia, both right after the Bosnian War.

What was your experience in Bosnia like?
I went to work in Novo Sarajevo, which was a city where many Serbs who had lived in Sarajevo had fled to and was very war-torn. It was the first election they’d held in 50 years. I supervised a precinct there, so I had to hire the precinct workers and stand as a witness while they counted the votes. There was a two-day election and after the first election day was over, we had to seal the ballot boxes and then store them in a public facility, which was guarded by UN troops. But after we dropped off the boxes, all these people started accusing us of cheating and saying that the ballots weren’t going to be watched. The next thing I knew, an angry mob showed up and the police came in and started pushing people around. All the sudden, the UN soldiers started rolling in on tanks and the physical stuff stopped. I wasn’t expecting any of that. It was a little bit scary. I think had I known that, I wouldn’t have gone.

That sounds like the kind of experience that shapes you moving forward. What was your take away from that?
That people who used to be friends and were really close and who literally lived across the street from each other weren’t friends anymore. I came back more confused than I was when I went there. It was odd to see people really argue over faith-based issues. When you study western civilization and you study how many wars have been started over religious differences, it’s one thing. But when you see it with your own eyes, it makes you wonder. You may think that it couldn’t happen here, but these countries are a lot older than us and you would think that history’s taught them a lesson.

During your time as a teacher, what was your favorite class to teach?
What’s funny is that I was told 12 years ago by the department chair that I was going to start teaching sociology. Of course, I hadn’t taken sociology since I was in college 25 years before that. I learned pretty quickly that there’s nothing like teaching something to really learn it because you start thinking more like your students and asking yourself: what do I need to know to understand this? It ended up being interesting because in this age we live in where it’s so hard to find the truth, sociology gives you these steps to gathering data and validating the data and then using it to get to the truth. That, coinciding with the Internet being like the Wild West of information, I think sociology is a great discipline for kids to learn because it enables students to differentiate what matters from what doesn’t matter and to problem solve. And those are good lifelong skills to have.

Clearly, you’ve not taken a linear path in your life. How does this affect how you view your students?
I connect my life with what I teach them about norms in sociology: that no one wants to be like everyone else. There’s this thing that we do in development, where we try to follow the rules. But I want my students to figure out who they are. In my class, we talk about the social psychologist Erik Erikson a lot and his ideas around identity. I tell my students that these are the years where you should be searching for your identity. They are going to be shaped by their parents, friends, school and social media, but it’s important for them to find the unique mixture that’s going to be you.

You can follow Mr. Cuda on Facebook and learn more about upcoming performance dates online. Catch him playing with ProgNation at 1 p.m. on Sunday, June 23 at Cain Park. The performance is free!