Bret Clement spent more than 30 years building a career in tech public relations, co-founding the agency Clement | Peterson PR. A couple of weeks ago, he handed the business to his partner, Kyle Peterson, and became a rookie teacher at age 55.
Clement now teaches Financial Literacy and Entrepreneurship at DSST: College View High School, part of the DSST network — originally founded as the Denver School of Science and Technology. He had already earned his CTE certification from the state of Colorado before the offer came through in an interview process he describes as fast and intense.
The DSST network runs on a clear premise: a STEM-focused curriculum meant to eliminate educational inequity while preparing every student for college and beyond. The network now serves more than 7,500 students across 16 schools in Denver and Aurora. This year, more than 900 seniors walked across the stage at the network's Senior Signing Day, and every graduating senior leaves with a plan — a trade, community college, military service, CU Boulder, Harvard, or anything in between.
Clement contrasts the discipline of the two worlds. In tech, he writes, 'business hires fast and judges faster,' noting that CMOs in the industry average just 1.8 years in the role. Teaching, by comparison, hired him just as quickly but set a different clock: veteran colleagues told him it could take three years to become exceptional at the job, and that timeline is treated as normal, even expected.
What strikes Clement most isn't the curriculum but the students. He describes Gen Z as carrying a 'quiet, solid confidence,' a form of self-trust he says he's still learning to apply to himself after three decades in an industry that prizes instant proof of value.
The numbers come first, and they tell a story the editorial class in Washington rarely wants to hear: a charter network outside the traditional district bureaucracy, serving thousands of students, producing a graduating class where every single senior — all 900-plus of them — has a defined next step. No mandate produced that outcome. A results-driven mission and the freedom to build a curriculum around entrepreneurship did.
Clement's own path underscores the point. A private-sector veteran, fluent in client accountability and margin pressure, walks into a classroom to teach financial literacy and entrepreneurship — skills the free market rewards and the administrative state too often treats as electives. When choice, competition and clear outcomes replace one-size-fits-all mandates, both students and second-act professionals like Clement find room to build something that works.
