Masuk Free Press

Students often don’t expect their teachers to have a life outside of school. It seems weird to think about what teachers do on the weekend, or where they spend their spring break. Despite what their students may assume, teachers actually live quite interesting lives outside of the classroom, and have entertaining stories that they rarely get the opportunity to share. These stories offer a glimpse into the teacher’s personality and life.

Mr. Humpal, a history teacher, had a crazy experience while traveling in London. “We got off the plane and we had to go through customs, and the customs people were on strike so everybody just walked in,” Humpal recalled. “And when we came home, we waited in line for about an hour to come back into our own country. It was odd to me to be allowed to just walk into somebody else’s country without declaring or checking anything.”

Although traveling is supposed to be fun and relaxing, it does include some stressful moments. 

“I missed a connection down in Houston one time,” said Humpal. “Our flight was delayed so we missed our connection and there was no plane until the next day. They busted us out to some crappy hotel to sleep in at night, which was awful — trying to figure out how we were going to get home. I even had to call out from work because I couldn’t get home.”

Mr. Humpal wasn’t the only teacher who has traveled the world. Mr. Collins, another history teacher, also had a crazy story to share.

 “Being stuck in a train strike all by myself with other people around me who did not speak any English. And trying to figure out how we were actually going to get to where our home was,” said Collins about his strangest traveling experience. “It was right over the border in Italy. I was coming from the French Riviera and trying to get back to Florence where I was studying abroad.” 

Collins was able to turn this difficult experience into a lesson. “The train strike was probably also the worst in that we had to figure things out and at the time I was only nineteen years old,” He recalled. “But it was also something that I was able to learn from, and how can I figure this out at a time when nobody knew where I was.”

If you were beginning to think that only history teachers travel, you would be wrong. Mr. McKee, a math teacher, had his craziest travel experience in Canada.

“I was up in the cusp in Canada snowboarding for the first time and it was an old-school t bar, they had to pull you up in powder, and I could not do it to save the life of me,” McKee said. “I had to have a gentleman in his mid-twenties put me on his lap to bring me up the t-bar so I could ski down in powder. It was a very surreal experience skiing in fresh powder, but that was kind of weird and uncomfortable.” 

Not only did McKee travel to Canada, but he also went to San Juan, where he had an unpleasant experience.

McKee recalled, “One of the worst experiences I had while traveling was when I was enjoying the great city of San Juan late at night and we had wandered down the wrong alley into the wrong establishment. So we walked into a place as a bunch of Caucasian guys, and we were out of place and not very welcome. So that was very interesting, kind of a be aware of your surroundings kind of a thing.”

Judging from these stories, it is clear that teachers do have lives outside of school, which takes them to countless places around the globe.