A swirly curled at the tips mustache with a big grin every early morning. ColinHobart has started teaching at West Leyden in 2024 and could never seemed to be more at home: “ I tell all my family this, it felt like a dream job to me because number one, I love teaching. Teaching was super fun for me, and just being able to interact with great students like Miranda all the time was just amazing. And I also got to coach volleyball on top of the teaching experience. It was a dream for me, because I enjoy what I do, and I make an effort because this is forever.” Reminiscing about good times. “I mean, this is a job for me, right? A lot of other teachers call this work, and I make an effort to not call this work because I enjoy it so much. I say school instead of work. And honestly, as a first year teacher, it was stressful, like I spent a lot of time outside of school, like, getting ready for class and everything. But I honestly did really enjoy it. And even though there were long days and I was tired from it, the overall experience in getting to spend the day with students all the time and great teachers in my department was amazing.”
As for the amazing time here at Leyden nothing could have prepared Mr. Hobart for the event of the year. “It was just very new. I didn’t expect it. This is the thing that all students look forward to, junior year, senior year, freshman year, sophomore year. So that whole week before spring break, everyone’s like, Oh, you know Junior Olympics this Friday. It was so fun to see how much everyone wanted it to happen, I almost wish it lasted a longer amount of time. Obviously we can’t take too much time away from school and our learning experience. But the whole atmosphere, school spirit, just everything was just like, wow. It felt like I was going to a big event outside of school, because everyone was packed in the Field House. It was great,” smiling a toothy grin. “I did Junior Olympics last year, I didn’t know what Junior Olympics was until probably a couple weeks before. Luckily, one of the other science teachers, Miss Flores, told me about what Junior Olympics was a little bit and of course, I wanted to be involved, since I didn’t know what it was. That whole thing was like, Okay, we’re going to do this big assembly where every single student in the school is in the field house and cheering each other on, and everyone in every class has different shirts. It was a really cool idea. Obviously it makes sense why they call it the Olympics, and they do these different competitions, at the end of it is a dodge ball between the winning class and the teachers. Of course, I want to do that. Why not get to throw dodge balls at my students that I’m mad at all the time. I’m kidding, of course,” chuckling at the thought. “But I told myself, I’m going to do this. I’m going to sign up. The whole environment in the gym where just everyone is cheering, especially cheering against the teachers, because they want the students to win. It was amazing just to see that school spirit, which you don’t get to see every day. I didn’t go to a football game last year, but I went to basketball games, and obviously volleyball games, and I helped out with the boys volleyball team too. So seeing all of that school spirit from the whole school all at once, because all students were required to be there, was pretty eye opening and made me want to stay at Leyden for longer, obviously last year was my first year. Seeing that was like, wow, this is the place for me, definitely. And of course, I got to play dodgeball which was super fun, and one of my students actually got me out, so we got to talk about it after spring break. I really loved it, it was a really great time.” As the school day ends and everyone leaves to celebrate another amazing year of Junior Olympics, Mr. Hobart will always be waiting in room 150 to help any students in need of assistance.