teachers
Teachers after Hours: Do you really know them?By: JOSHUA GAY ON OCTOBER 12, 2013
Teachers have a bright smiles on their faces during class, in the halls and during conversations with their students. Teachers are the foundation of learning and without them we would not have school. There are all types of teachers; there are kind teachers, sweet teachers, the so called “easy” teachers, the crazy and sometimes psychotic teachers and of course “-the you wish you never had teachers-.” Most associate a teacher with a person that is loyal, trustworthy and knowledgeable. We look at teachers in a different world and sometimes forget that they are normal people like everyone else. Teachers live in the school world, so students hardly think about what their lives could be like outside of school. For instance, English teacher Paula Main typically hangs out with her kids during her free time.
Main spends time with her kids by going to the library and cooking meals with them. Main and her family travel over the summer and on other long school breaks. They have a house in Florida that Main and her family visit. They have also traveled to New York and Washington D.C. One place they would love to visit is Europe. “It would be cool to travel to more places,” Main said. “I want my kids to see as much of the world as I can get them to see.” Drama teacher Monica Edwards also has a life outside of school. Some think being a drama teacher wouldn't be as stressful as some of the other teaching jobs, mainly because Edwards doesn’t have as many tests to grade, as many essays to examine and as much math homework to check. However that is not exactly true. Running a stage play is not a piece of cake; you have to put countless hours and dedication in the project. There is a lot of stress that can come out of making a theatre production, such as the lighting problems, something going wrong during the production, actors not performing to their ability and most importantly whether your audience will be satisfied during the performance. On top of what Edwards does for the school, she also cares for her 92 and 87 year old parents on the weekends. “I shop for them, clean for them, do their laundry, take care of their cleanliness and take them to the store” Edwards said. While Main and Edwards both spend time with their families after school, English teacher Joseph Dowless loves playing the card game Magic. Every month Dowless and his friend, exceptional children’s teacher Chris Baker, go to places like Baltimore and Washington D.C. and play Magic. While they are there, they play in a number of tournaments, in which they could win up to a couple thousand dollars. Magic is a trading card game created by Richard Garfield. The point of the game is the player has cards and they represent different things such as spells, creatures and things which they summon. In the game the player battles with someone else and uses every resource to defeat them. The catch on the other hand is the player is given 60 cards per round, they duel and out of all the printed cards that the player has they use the 60 cards that they feel will best benefit them. “Its kind of like a complex game of chess,” Dowless said. “The game is always evolving so you get new cards all the time and all these new cards have infinite new reactions with the cards you already have.” Dowless said that Magic started out as a kids game but now is a nationally acclaimed game played by many professional people. “When you're playing competitively it is super intense,” Dowless said. Dowless stopped playing Magic for 15 years after college. When he came back into the game, there were organized tournaments with people ready to win. Dowless regrets doing that because he could have been even better than he is now. Dowless is very dedicated to his craft and loves Magic, but when he is not teaching English or playing his game, he is spending time with his friends and girlfriend. Dowless’s usual day consists of coming home, eating dinner with his girlfriend and sometimes catching a movie at the house. The teachers of Rose are very multifaceted and devoted to each one of their duties outside of school. Whether it is directing a play, spending time with their kids or even playing a national card game, all of them have separate lives that detach them from the ‘teacher world”. Who knows, the teachers that are the most loveable or maybe the teachers that students despise the most could be doing something that could change their entire outlook on them. |
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