Interview with a Teacher

New school year, new journalistic challenge!

Our first interlocutor in this school year first issue is Mr Joe, our favorite English and Media Studies teacher.

Are you more of a hunter or a gatherer?

Hmmm, that depends on the situation. When it comes to lunch time in the school cafeteria I like to circle a table brimming with delicious dishes and hope someone invites me to sit down and have a bite. I think that doesn’t really fit into either category come to think of it.

You’re a new addition to the crayon box. What color would you be and why?

I’d love to be purple. There are just so many good associations that come with it: grape, Kool-Aid, Prince, lavender, the purple tang fish, Lucifer hummingbird and purple cauliflower.

What were you like in high school?

Nerdy and fun. I loved comic books and Star Trek (which is better than Star Wars, though as a marketing ploy I admit it’s no contest). Seriously though, I wish I had been more studious and focused more on learning languages. You can never know enough.

You’ve been given an elephant. You can’t give it away or sell it. What would you do with the elephant?

I’d probably try to keep it. It would be a great excuse to finally pack up and move into the country side. This is my dream. So it’d be a neat little farm: a bunch of dogs, perhaps a beat up old horse I’d save from the sausage factory , an elephant and a reclining chair. Awesome!

That’s a lot of peanuts.

Well, if I care about someone it doesn’t really matter how much of something they need as long as it’s peanuts. Ha, ha… See what I did there?

Estimate how many windows are in Belgrade?

A billion-trillion! Who knows?! But it is a great question Luka. Thinking about amounts of things really puts the known cosmos into perspective. It’s not just about everything being a small part of something else, it’s more like how many windows have I seen in my life and taken them for granted?

If you woke up and had 2,000 unread emails and could only answer 300 of them, how would you choose which ones to answer?

I suppose the ones with the word “urgent” in the subject would grab my attention first. I like to label my stress and hurry so I’d probably recognize that same sense in someone else. Empathy is not easily achieved. You have to signpost that you require it and then you just might get it.

Do you consider Monopoly to be a game that you play with friends or enemies?

I don’t play Monopoly; only when I’m stuck in a cabin, deep in the woods with angry squirrels waiting outside ready to throw themselves at me. Even then I’d prefer Yahtzee or dominos.

Who would win a fight between Spiderman and Batman?

I really hope they can work out their issue in a peaceful manner. Fighting is just not the solution. Superheroes know very well that reasonable, peaceful resolutions of conflict are far better than any violent ones.

Everyone has a good app idea. What’s yours?

I keep misplacing things around my house. I’d love an app that which could keep an inventory of various items I normally use and could give their location on a map.

What inspires you?

Seeing that spark of comprehension in the eyes of my students. That’s when I know that knowledge has been passed and that it’ll be put to good use. There is nothing like it to me in the world.

A penguin walks through the door right now wearing a sombrero. What does she say and why is she here?

She’s here because she knows that PRIMA International School is the best of its kind in the world and wants a great education. She also wants to hang out with the coolest kids on the planet.

What about the sombrero?

It speaks about her style. Everybody at PRIMA is very stylish, it’s fact!