Before becoming the adults they are, giving lectures and homework to students, teachers once roamed the halls of high school, sitting in the same seats, being lectured as well. In this issue, we take a look at the past high school life of one of our history teachers, Mr. Carroll.
One event from high school that left an impression on Mr. Carroll was the first day of school of freshman year. The humorous incident ended with him gaining a new nickname: Trash Can Kid.
“So it was my first day of high school, probably didn’t hit puberty yet, so I was very short. We had a P.E. class, freshman year, and we had these big drum trash cans, so all the kids were running and jumping over the trash can, and I was much smaller than everybody, so I thought it would be really funny if I could do it and prove and show them I was equal to them. So I took off running and I jumped over the trashcan and my foot clipped over the back of the trash can and I fell into the trash can and so kids called me Trash Can Kid for like the first month or so. It was in a playful manner; it wasn’t mean or anything. So that was the first day of school falling into the trash can,” said Mr. Carroll.
Despite the somewhat rocky start, not all of his high school experience ended up in the trash can. One thing that stood out and helped with his love of history was when Mr. Carroll taught his entire world history class every Friday. He would use clips from The Simpsons as a way to have a little fun, but also to relate it back to the topics being learned.
“And so I played part of an episode of The Simpsons, and then taught the history like it could be World War I, World War II, Vietnam, and then had different clips and I would teach that to my classmates. And so that made me really excited because we could watch episodes of The Simpsons.”
Even though his original intention after high school wasn’t to teach history, Mr. Carroll’s time teaching his class inspired an opportunity that would later lead him to teach APUSH and Gov/Econ at our school.
