The blacksmithing forge reaches nearly 1,600 degrees Celsius, hot enough to make most people step back. To Travis Finneran '05, that hesitation is part of the lesson.

“There you go,” he said. “It’s actually a pretty safe endeavor.”

Next year, students at Leysin American School in Switzerland will be able to join him for an experimental history activity that includes blacksmithing, natural fabric dyeing, historical cooking, and the reconstruction of several ancient technologies.

Travis believes people learn best when they are building, experimenting, failing, and trying again. Much of that philosophy comes from his own experience as a student.

His story in Switzerland began in 1999, after his biological parents lost custody of their children due to substance abuse and legal troubles. A temporary arrangement brought him from the United States to Leysin, where his Swiss aunt offered to care for him “for a couple of months” while the family situation resolved itself.

“It was only supposed to be a short stay,” he said.

After arriving in Switzerland, he entered Swiss public schools without knowing any French. Within months he was speaking the language well enough to navigate daily life. Later, when given the option to return to the United States, he refused.

“I said, ‘absolutely not. I have a new life here. It’s better here.’”

After several years in Swiss public school, he was enrolled at LAS, where he struggled academically while managing “the whole cocktail” of ADHD, dyslexia, and dysgraphia.

“I struggled a lot at LAS,” he said. “I did not have an easy time here.”

At sixteen, during a school cultural trip to Normandy led by LAS history teacher Russell Quinlan, Travis experienced a turning point.

During the trip, he found himself deeply affected by visiting the Normandy beaches and historical sites. Translating French for classmates, he began to see himself differently.

“It was one of those pivotal moments in my life where things just clicked,” he said.

Instead of focusing on memorizing dates and names, he became fascinated by the lives of ordinary people whose stories have rarely been recorded.

“How did they make their bread? How did they make their tools?” he asks. “That’s what has become an obsession in my life.”

Outside the classroom, he began visiting castles and archaeological sites around Switzerland. He learned blacksmithing techniques, ancestral carpentry, and historical cooking methods. In Leysin, where old tools and workshop spaces are still found in basements and barns, experimentation felt natural.

“We started making spears together,” he said of the projects he worked on with his adoptive father. “Knives and short swords and halberds and javelins.”

Hands-on work became central to the way he processes information and understands the world.

“If I can’t do something with my hands on a daily basis, it’s difficult for me,” he said. “My brain ends up going on autopilot.”

After graduating from LAS, Travis entered the hospitality industry, eventually moving to Finland, where he worked as a chef for more than a decade. There he met his wife at a dog park, and the two started their life together before returning to Leysin during the COVID pandemic to help his adoptive parents through some financial difficulties.

Today, he and his wife, Milla, live in the Esplanade dorm with their two children. Milla works as a school nurse, and Travis serves as a residential assistant and activity leader.

For years, he assumed education would not be his world.

“My entire life, I was convinced that because I struggled with schooling that I would have nothing to offer in that environment,” he said.

At the time, his career as a chef had become unsustainable. Long hours and the physical demands of restaurant work had left him with chronic back pain.

“I have gone from being a guy with a broken back who just couldn’t work in kitchens anymore,” he said, “to now hearing people tell me that I’m good at educating teenagers.”

His career direction recently became clearer during the two-year Resident Scholar program at LAS, where he has deepened his work in experimental archaeology. The project has given him space to share his interests publicly and realize that students respond to his methods.

“This program changed my life,” he said.

Now he plans to pursue a bachelor’s degree in European history followed by a teaching credential.

Travis says his past struggles in school help him relate to students who feel anxious or disconnected in academic settings.

Recently, while working with a student experimenting with reconstructed fabric armor, he noticed the student becoming increasingly worried about failure.

“I kept telling her, either all of it works or none of it works. We don’t know what we’re doing. That’s the whole point,” he said. “The world’s not going to explode. Will the skies fall, the seas boil, and the wolf devour the sun? And will Ragnarök be upon us?” he asked her. “No, no, no. We just start again.”

The philosophy reflects the way Travis thinks about learning itself.

“It won’t matter if it doesn’t work,” the student realized aloud.

“Exactly,” Travis said. “If it doesn’t work, then we learn why it didn’t work. And then we rebuild it.”