Q: How long have you been teaching?
A: I’ve been teaching for 8 ½ years. More specifically, 6 years in Florida, 2 ½ here in New York.
Q: What was your dream growing up?
A: I always thought I would go into something with teaching. Actually, I didn’t know what that looked like when I was a kid. I always wanted to help people in general. Part of me thought that was being a cop or detective or something like that at one point, but I never really followed up with that.
Q: What would you do if you weren’t a teacher?
A: I’d probably work with technology either as a software engineer or some type of engineer. But you know it’s terrible: I’m bad at math!
Q: What made you become a teacher?
A: So when I was in high school I did a lot of tutoring, which was good because, you know, I made some money doing that, and then I got some good community service hours, and I just found I had a knack for it. When I was in college, I was actually originally in school to be an English teacher. Then I took a couple of classes, and I was like, yeah, this isn’t for me, just the English part, though the education classes were great, so I switched over to social studies and found my love for history and psychology, and here I am now.
Q: What is your favorite memory as a teacher?
A: When I was in Florida, I helped raise 115,000 dollars for cancer research. Working with our national honor society and working with my community service, that’s where the infamous rainbow beard was born. The kids asked me, as a bet, if they raised enough money, would I dye my beard a color? Originally, the bet was set at 60 or 70 thousand, but when we got the final numbers back and they got 115, I was blown away. So that’s why I wear a different color every day. The first day was green, the second day was blue, and the third day was pink because we wore pink on Wednesday. On the fourth day, I got a school-wide vote, and they voted purple to see if I looked like Thanos. Then, the last day, I did the surprise rainbow beard.
Q: What’s your favorite class to teach?
A: It’s definitely between IB geography and psychology. It’s just because I love looking at real-world issues and applying knowledge and practice to them. In psychology, we look at things like mental illness; you know, we look at different stigmas, and I think making kids more aware of those things is very important, so not only are they more aware of taking care of their own mental health, but they also think about when working with others and maybe being a support for someone in their life later on, hopefully. With IB geography, it’s about understanding what’s going on in the world. Like talking about the issues, it helps us get out of our tunnel vision. It’s like where we live here and know our issues, but what about other things we’re connected to?
Q: How long have you taught this class?
A: I’ve taught IB geography for 2 years and psychology has been my 7th year.
Q: What made you teach that class?
A: With IB geography, CK originally asked if I would be willing to take it over because Prof. Tucker had left and the students who were going into IB 12th last year needed social studies for the topics more social studies-oriented beyond science. So I took on the class, and I taught that both to the IB 12th and 11th sections. So that’s why Prof. Fields, who’s a science teacher, took over the 12th section, so they get more scientific-based sections of the class. With psychology, one of the teachers I worked with in my old school had the elective, and he retired, so I asked if I could take it. So I started teaching that with, like, 1 or 2 sections. It was fun because I was able to make my own curriculum.
Q: What are some experiences you had in this class?
A: I think most of the experience comes with having legitimate conversations about what’s going on in the world with you guys. Whether it’s a lack of time or either, no one showed you how to look these things up. It’s interesting to see your guys’ perspective on what’s going on. For example, we were talking about the usual Hamas war and what’s going on there. I talk to adults about political things all the time, like my friends or colleagues. It’s good to hear from you guys too though, especially with juniors and seniors because you guys are adults at this point, so you’re gonna be dealing with the real world as they say within a year or two.
Q: Has anyone ever not liked this class?
A: I’m sure that people haven’t liked classes, whether it’s how I teach or my personality doesn’t match what they want in a teacher and how they learn. I either change it up depending on the student if we have that communication open or they would switch out, which is fine. I’m not hurt by that. There’s also some who don’t think it’s important to learn mental health depending on their culture or what they have been taught about it. I would say with IB geography, it’s a difficult class. It’s more of a step ahead if it’s your first IB class.
