It’s two o’clock, the doors to Scituate High School are closed. Most of the students have gone home, which means it’s again time for the teachers to go into their hibernation for the rest of the day. “What do teachers do after school? They all come together to schedule all their exams and projects on the same day” Students tend to be oblivious to the thought that teachers actually have lives outside the hour-long period they spend with them. While most of a teacher’s life is spent tending to the academic needs of our sassy prepubescent ideas, teachers are a lot more than just educators, whether we as students would care to believe it or not.
Most of the sports teams at SHS are coached by Scituate’s teachers. And there must be something in the water that makes the math wings water fountain so good, because most of the math teachers are also sport savants as well. Mrs. Mcglynn has in the past few years expressed her love for hockey by coaching Scituate’s own girl’s hockey team. Mr. Forde previously took command of SHS’s soccer team and Miss Oldenburg coaches varsity lacrosse and soccer. But what most people don’t realize is that department head Dr. Ekstrom has even coached many basketball teams throughout his teaching career. He has even coached NBA stars such as Dana Barros, Bobby Carrington, and James Bailey. Barros even became an NBA All-Star. Ekstrom also confirmed that he coached Principal Wargo a while back.
Mr. Mclaughlin is known by his students as Bruce Springsteen’s biggest fan, and if the students are lucky, he may even treat them by performing to a song or two during class time. Even before becoming a teacher Mclaughlin spent his free time playing guitar at pubs including Scituate’s own TK O’Malley’s. He is now on for playing shows, performing Irish and modern hits on St. Patricks Day, Scituate’s equivalent to Christmas. He also plays at Spanish/French teacher Mr. Haddad’s restaurant Haddads.
Mclaughlin isn’t the only one to spend his time around the pubs, history teacher Mr. Roberts spends time away from school bartending, but seeing as this is a school newspaper for students well below the drinking age, I won’t go into any more detail than that.
Science teacher Mr. Maguire spends his time outside the school birding (as you might have assumed from his daily bird challenges during lunch). Maguire has a public twitter page “@maguirescience” where he constantly updates his students and any other weather enthusiasts about the forecast.
As students we tend to neglect our teachers’ personal lives and imagine them as more lifeless statues than actual interesting people. Learning about your teacher can make your class more colloquial than just boring information that goes in one ear and out the rest.