Sydney Gladu, an investigative journalist podcast producer, lives in Seattle. But growing up in Bend, she worked as a bagger at Newport Avenue Market.
That’s where she realized she loved hearing people’s stories. Customers’ and coworkers’ gossip and news — she couldn’t get enough. And podcasts like “This American Life” lit up Gladu’s interest not just in top-shelf audio storytelling, but relieved her of the dyslexia that had hereto made reading a tortuous affair.
Gladu graduated from Bend High School in 2014. Now 30, she recently spoke with the Source about her gripping, Oregon-centered, six-part podcast “Not Just A Terrible Story.” It’s an independent investigation into educator sexual misconduct at Centennial High School in Gresham, Oregon.
Over the course of the first season, Gladu follows Stacie Love, who married her former high school English teacher in the early 2000s. Charismatic and young for a teacher, Brett Fischer made a habit of picking popular, conventionally pretty students to serve as his teacher assistants.
Love was one of them.
While Gladu’s “Serial”-caliber storytelling can fill in the rest of that arc, there’s a Bend connection in the fifth episode. In a bout of morbid serendipity, Gladu uncovers that not only is Fischer currently employed by a one-on-one private coaching company based in Beaverton, but her former Bend High coach, who lost his teaching certificate for inappropriate relationships with students in the 2010s, also worked there.
“Not Just a Terrible Story” is a fascinating listen. In a note to the Source, Gladu describes how her story zooms out to the wider system at play — the long history of educator sexual misconduct in Oregon schools, the practice of “passing the trash,” and the lack of accountability that lets it continue.
Gladu’s work is a masterclass in not just procedural investigation, but earnest trust-building with people who share with her some of the most disturbing moments of their lives.
Gladu gives listeners deep reporting: interviews with Love, the main storyteller, her family, former students, educators and federal agents. Gladu also interviews experts and combs emails, yearbooks and reports by the Oregon Teachers, Standards and Practices Commission. The first three episodes are out now, with the last three dropping on Oct. 13.
[This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity. For more information on educator sexual misconduct, read this report, originally published in Kappen magazine.]
the Source: During the course of your investigation, you uncovered a connection to a former coach at Bend High School. Tell us how he pops up in your reporting?
Sydney Gladu: Just to start off, I grew up in Bend, graduated from Bend High in 2014. During my sophomore year, there was a teacher, Daniel Weber, who lost his teaching license, but at the time I didn’t know what meant. I also didn’t know that there was a public record of that, available online. During the course of reporting on Stacie’s story, and people learn that [her former English teacher and then-husband] Brett Fischer ends up losing his teacher’s license, Brett and Daniel went on to work at the same private coaching company called InsideTrack. They provide one-on-one career coaching with an equity mission. I found they both work there after losing their teaching licenses for educator sexual misconduct. [At press time, Fischer no longer works there. InsideTrack has not commented on the podcast series nor confirmed that Weber is an employee.]
tS: Whoa.
SG: What’s so disturbing to me is that I didn’t uncover this through some sophisticated background check system designed to connect these dots. It surfaced because more than a decade later, I revisited the memory [of Weber] I’d nearly forgotten, and that happened because I happened to be reporting on this story.
tS: In the instance of Brett Fischer, the English teacher in Gresham, you break down in your podcast that he lost his teaching license for more than just inappropriate relationships with a female student. He also wasn’t charged for some serious crimes where now, he would have been.
SG: Yes, Fischer lost his license for a myriad of reasons. A [Homeland Security Investigations] file states that ‘a teacher was accessing CSEM [child sexual exploitation material] from Mr. Fischer’s computer.’ It doesn’t directly attribute the CSEM to him, but if you look at it you can see a very extensive record of who entered or exited the room that that computer was in. We were able to track down the DHS detectives, who told us a bit about the investigation. A law called Access with Intent to View was passed three years after that material was viewed on Mr. Fischer’s computer. So the detectives talked about how many more cases would have been prosecuted had that law been around earlier.
tS: And a person can’t be retroactively charged with breaking a law that didn’t exist at the time.
Gladu: Yeah, there’s no carriage of justice for what happened in 2005; just to the extent of him losing his teacher’s license.
tS: I went to a small rural high school in Iowa. A very young band teacher, right out of college, had a sexual relationship with a senior who was 18. She was transferred to another public school somewhere else in the state. When people hear about your work, do they share anecdotes like these?
SG: Yeah, everyone we talked to says that happened at their school. It also plays out in what I’ve heard from friends in my own high school, in pop culture, in movies and sitcoms. I feel we should always question the narratives, right? There is some data on educator sexual misconduct. In a landmark survey in 2004, one in 10 students said they experienced it, and one in five reported being targeted by it. There have been laws passed that are helpful, particularly in Oregon. In 2024, lawmakers expanded the definition of a “student” to include the full calendar year after graduation. I think that’s great. But is that protection enough? What other things can we be doing? We need to implement these policies, and you kind of run into this matrix of districts and state and these little tiny cracks that somebody can fall through.
tS: Oof.
SG: One of the most disturbing statistics I’ve seen is that 89% of educators say they would not report a fellow educator they find suspect. But when you dig in, it’s not often you’re going to walk in on sexual misconduct, right? But you’re going to see breadcrumbs. You’re going to see the teacher closing the door. You’ll see them spending one-on-one time together, flirting. And those are the things we should be instructing teachers and other educators to report on.
tS: You know, the police have their “Thin Blue Line.” I think we can come up for one for teachers and their “Thin Chalk Line.”
SG: Oh, I love that.
tS: Local readers want to hear about the local gal who made good. What sparked your passion and talent for investigative storytelling?
SG: When I lived in Bend, I worked at Newport Avenue Market as a bagger. I got a lot of gossip. People are always telling you things and I really developed a love for hearing stories. And as someone who grew up with dyslexia, audio was my preferred way to start to understand the world. I have so many memories of listing to “This American Life” in the back of my mom’s car, being like, “I guess this is what reading feels like for other people,” because for me at the time, reading was torture. I went to a great elementary school called Westside Village. There was a lot of encouragement to express yourself, dive into your passions and ask questions.
tS: How did you learn to question authority, like teachers, in a constructive, altruistic way?
SG: Both my parents have a lot of practice questioning authority. I grew up in a house where that was allowed, which I feel is really important. I grew up being heard. And that comes up in a lot of research: listening to kids, hearing them out. A lot of times, they’re telling us something and we’re just not hearing it. When we talk about grooming, what’s so fascinating is the child usually recognizes the monster. What we don’t talk about is the fact that these predators are actually grooming our communities. They’re people who go the extra mile, doing the drop-off and pick-up, like volunteering. They want that cover. When your kid comes home and says, ‘Hey, I have a weird feeling about this person,’ actually listen to them and talk it through with them, rather than dismissing it because, ‘No, that teacher is really great. They volunteer at church and do all this other stuff.”
tS: It’s been great talking with you. What other projects do you have in the works?
SG: I’m currently working on a story for our second season. We like telling stories that haven’t been told before and that present a really nuanced look into something that maybe we’ve accepted as a society. I also work at a podcast company called Glass Podcasts, where I’m working on a show called “Love Trapped,” which is a really harrowing, interesting tale about a former bachelor caught up in a paternity scandal. And it’s not what it seems to be.
MAKE LOCAL JOURNALISM HAPPEN
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
