If the only time you visit the 1st floor is to go to lunch, you are missing some of the of the most creative places and people in the building including the subject of this Q&A, art teacher Mr. Jeff Frank.

Q: How long have you taught at the high school, and how long have you been teaching overall?

A: I started my first job with the Ligonier Valley School District in 1996, and then I got married to my wife and moved out to Michigan. We were out there for eight years and I taught there until we had my daughters and we were like, ‘we want to get back closer to family. So we moved back here and that’s when I got the job here at Shaler in 2008. 

Q: What inspired you to become a teacher?

A:  I always liked art; being in the art classroom and being in the art classes was kind of the place where I felt most comfortable in school. My art teacher asked me if I had ever thought about becoming an art teacher, and it was one of those light bulb moments. ‘Yeah, maybe that’s something I could do and that I would enjoy doing.’

Q: What’s the best concert that you’ve been to? 

A: I saw Hozier a few years ago and I thought it was a fantastic show. I also went to see Lord Huron last year and I really thought that was one of the top shows that I got to see.

Q: What’s your fattest moment?

A:  Okay. My family and I took a cruise, and I had never been on a cruise before. It was a Disney cruise to Canada and the kids were still kind of young so they let you eat whatever you want all the time. I think I gained around 9 pounds when I was on this cruise, and when I came back and I realized what horrible things I’d done to my body, I had to work out for a long time to try and make up for it. 

Q: What’s your favorite student slang, and can you use it in a sentence?

A:  The one that I borrow sometimes is ‘Let them cook.’ For example, don’t disturb Johnny, just let him cook, he needs to get that project done. 

Q: What is the craziest place you’ve visited?

A: So my mother is from the middle of nowhere Kansas and she used to take us there when we were kids to see the grandparents. While there, we went to a place called the Garden of Eden in Lucas, Kansas. It’s located at this man’s house and he built this whole Garden of Eden out of concrete with all of these statues. He’s dead now, but he’s displayed in a glass coffin. It’s said that if you put in a donation, he’ll wink at you. I remember being at this place just thinking like, how creepy the whole thing was. It’s almost like a mausoleum with all these creepy old statues so it’s like a tourist attraction in a twisted way.  And it’s now on the National Historic Registry.

Q: Most irresponsible purchase you’ve made 

A: I just bought a house. So that has kind of consumed my life recently. The house needs a lot of work too, it’s one of those projects I took on since both of my daughters are going to be in college next year. So I was thinking like, I’m going to be so bored, I won’t have anything going on in my life. I don’t want to just be sitting around all the time. So I thought, What can I do to fill time? I know, I’ll buy a dilapidated old house! The plan was to have it be a fixer upper then maybe sell it or to make it mine. Right now, I’m planning to fix it up. That’s been an exhausting thing this year. The wife reminds me that it was an irresponsible purchase every chance she gets.

Q: First car you bought?

A: It was an old 1978 Jeep C.J. Seven. It was navy blue, but it had all different colored panels because it was all rusting out. I paid $800 for it, ($1,729 in today’s money), and then it was similar to the house because I had to fix it up and tear it apart. I bought it in 1993.

Q: What led to the decision to begin teaching in the high school after being an art teacher at Burchfield?

A: Well, so every year at the primary school I loved teaching, and I always tell people it’s the greatest job because you go in and you’re like, ‘Guys, big news. I got new crayons,’ and then everybody’s like, ‘Yes’, everybody loves you. And they say, ‘Frank, you are the best. You’re my favorite teacher.’ You know, it could be that easy. And then you come here and you say, ‘Okay, guys, I’m going to give you each $100. If you do your work today.’  And the high school kids grumble, ‘Yeah, whatever. I hate doing this.’ So that part of the primary school is just so good because you’re like a celebrity all the time. And I love that. But the kindergartners just wear you out. And as you get older, it keeps getting tougher to keep up with their energy. And then like, you have to write their names on the back of their papers and you have to teach them how to cut every year and make sure they don’t cut each other’s hair. So when I came up here, it was so nice to come up with an idea for a project and hand it over then watch the high school kids just be like ‘I can do this’ and ‘maybe I’ll try this’. Just the creativity and the level of skill up here has been so much fun to work with.

Q: How do you teach differently when your students are high schoolers as compared to primary schoolers?

A: A lot of times in primary school, you’re trying to stop them because they’ll just keep going, and going, and going, and then they just end up making a mess. So they’ll get to a point where it’s like they did pretty well and they met their goal, but then they just want to keep working on it and then it ends up just being a black mush pile, right? So you have to always be aware of things like, okay, we’re going to pull back here. And here at the high school, it’s almost the opposite. You’re always trying to encourage them like, ‘Okay, what else can we do? What else could you do?’ So that’s a big difference. And then, as I said earlier, it’s just this really amazing thing to watch high school kids come up with ideas that I didn’t even consider when I came up with a project, and to see where you guys take it. It’s just exciting to be part of that.

Q: Most rewarding part of being a high school art teacher / being a teacher in general?

A: I think when you get kids that maybe didn’t anticipate that they were going to enjoy being part of an art class or when kids learn how to do a certain project. The excitement that comes with it, and then just to watch them kind of become skilled in it and to a point where they’re rewarded from something that you share with them. 

Q: Most frustrating part about being an art teacher?

A: I don’t want to come off as being the negative teacher, but I think the apathy. There are some students that are just difficult . You tried to reach them and to motivate them and there’s kind of, but it’s difficult to find the button to make them excited or motivated or willing to put in time on things. Yeah, we can speculate, but the competition, like back in the day, there wasn’t a lot of competition. But now that phone is such tough competition because it is so engaging and you can be anywhere on that phone and talk to anyone in the world. And it’s just like that phone is so much cooler than any teachers ever going to be.

Q: Song that you’ve been listening to recently that you love?

A: I would say I really like the band Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats right now. The song Still Out There Running is one of my favorite songs from this year so far. It has this kind of contemplative melancholy throughout the song. So I don’t know whether that’s just my mood so far this year or not. 

Q: What would your last meal be?

A: Yeah, I love prime rib. So my pick would probably be prime rib, a baked potato, and maybe some asparagus and cheesecake for myself.

Q: If you could live somewhere that’s not in Pittsburgh where would you live?

A: Do I get to take my family with me? If so, I would probably go to Ireland. I’d love to live in the country. We visited Clifton, and it was really cool to just be a part of the Irish community.  They’re neat people over there even if they’re completely different culturally