Ainsworth School

If you’re ever lucky enough to tag along with Tom Myers and his bird club at Skyline School, you’ll most likely notice a few things: that Skyline in the early morning can be a breathtakingly beautiful place, and that if you have a question about birds – or the natural world in general – the man his students call “Teacher Tom” can almost certainly answer it.

Myers, who teaches third and fourth grade, has always been a nature lover, but it was in 2017 that he really turned his attention sky-ward. He was reading Kyo Maclear’s book, Birds Art Life: A Year of Observation, and he and some friends went paddling at Smith and Bybee Wetlands in North Portland. They were able to identify some of the birds they saw, and Myers, moved by both that experience and Maclear’s words on the importance of slowing down and taking notice, decided to put up a bird feeder in his backyard.

A variety of birds flocked to the feeder, including the species Myers refers to as his “spark bird,” or the bird that really hooked him and solidified his identity as a birder.

“I was already starting to watch my feeders, and I was bringing binoculars canoeing, using my field guide to learn about the birds I saw,” he said. “Then I noticed the Spotted Towhee in my guide and read online how common they were. It was a bird I decided I wanted to see, and that very day, one visited my backyard feeder station, and I was elated. Turns out that bird visited daily, and had probably lived in or near my yard for a long time, but that’s one of the great joys of birding: it adds a whole new layer to looking at the world around you.”

A new way of looking at the natural world is exactly what Teacher Tom hopes to instill in his students, all of whom enthusiastically don their “binos” every Wednesday morning to hike around Skyline’s campus with him, their eyes and ears wide open to exciting discoveries.

“I hope they take some time outside of Bird Club to slow down, notice the plants and animals around them,” Myers said. “Whether they’re at school, at home, in a park, etc., once someone is excited about nature, they get to see the world through that lens no matter where they are.”

Myers launched the Skyline Bird Club in 2022 as part of the school’s C.A.S. or “Creativity Activity Service” clubs. At the time, he was already a bit of a birding celebrity on TikTok, where his “Bird of the Week” videos had been attracting a larger and larger audience since the start of the COVID pandemic. Teacher Tom currently has 240K followers on the app, where every Sunday morning he introduces TikTokers to a new bird species and its song/call, habitat, range, diet, and behavior.

He thinks the videos’ predictable charm – they all follow the same basic format – might be key to their popularity. “I get a lot of comments and messages from people who say it’s a part of their weekly routine.”

And soon even more nature lovers and bird-curious folks will have a chance to get to know Teacher Tom and benefit from his vast knowledge of the feathered kingdom. In June 2025, Timber Press will be publishing Myers’ first book about birds.

“It’s a field guide to the birds of the Pacific Northwest, written for kids,” Myers said, “but I think it will appeal to people of all ages, and I hope it will be a good resource to someone in our region who is just starting to notice birds and want to try birding.”

For Myers, birding has become something he does reflexively. Like many passionate birders, he’s started a “life list” – a list of all the species he’s ever identified – and he tries to add to it all the time.“Now I bird nearly every day after school, and most weekends,” he said. “While driving in the car, looking out any window, going on any walk, doing yard work. I’m sort of always birding.”