For this week’s teacher feature, we interviewed the English teacher Mr. Chris Gaul, the ELA Dept. Chair who teaches both AP Literature and English 9.
Q: What is your favorite student slang, and how do you use it?
A: Since I’m in my late 50s, student slang sounds really bad coming from me, so I always make sure I do it with a sarcastic tone. Low key and high key, because then you can just mess with them. You can be like, ‘oh, I’m really low key, high key right now.’ People tell me, you’re saying that wrong. I know that. I’m good with it. To me, language has changed so much over the years. It’s really fun to listen to students use it every now and then, and throw something out, and just watch everyone cringe when the middle aged English teacher says you’re going to eat on this test.
Q: What would you have for a last meal?
A: If I could get it from a restaurant in Beijing, Peking Duck, which, when it’s done well, is off the rails good. If we’re being more realistic about things, probably a good Chicago style pizza, which is one of the greatest things in the world. New Yorkers are wrong.
Q: What’s your most irresponsible purchase?
A: Is my wife going to be reading this? The one that’s the sorest point right now is the Renaissance Festival doublet, which I bought about two years ago. That ran about $400. (My wife) was not a fan. I’ve been going to ren-fests for a long, long time. When you go in everyday clothes, it’s not the same experience. When you go and you’re dressed up, there’s just a different feeling in people. My general take was, okay, so I need this. I could look for something inexpensive, but I always liked the idea that if you’re going to get something that’s a showpiece, go for the showpiece.
Q: What is your favorite place you’ve ever visited?
A: Florence in Italy. We went to Florence for a few days, and then outside to a place called Montepulciano. Montepulciano is in the olive growing region of Tuscany. It’s one of the slices on Earth that they just got right. It’s the sort of place where you drive around and you get to the top of a hill and you go, that is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life. And then you turn around and go, oh wait, that’s more beautiful. It’s a place that I’d go to again. It’s also really fun there because when you speak Italian as an American to an Italian, they get really impressed and are really, really upbeat about it.
Q: What is the best concert you’ve seen?
A: We’re going to go back to prehistory here. Probably my favorite concert was back when I was in high school. A friend and I were really bored. There was a band that we’d never heard of that was playing downtown. Tickets were eight bucks so we figured what the heck, get the tickets and we listen to one or two of their songs to get ready for it. The band was called U2, it was the tour for their album War. So that would be 1983, 84 or something like that. It’s a small theater and the energy was just off the rails. So a lot of fun.
Q: What is your favorite book/topic to teach?
A: I really, really love the magical realism stuff. Song of Solomon is a huge favorite. I love teaching poetry. My feeling with poetry is not to tear apart and over analyze it, it’s to see what works for you and then try and figure out why you like it. I think my freshmen know, I hate Romeo and Juliet. I think what happened is way, way, way back in prehistory, they were like, ‘All right, we’ve got to teach a bunch of 15 year olds about Shakespeare. Let’s have them read about a 15 year old.’ Then it got morphed into this love story, which it’s really not. But by and large, I enjoy what I teach and I’ve tried to find ways, even if it’s something I’m not in love with, to have some fun with it.
Q: Any favorite books and authors?
A: I’ve been on a real Neil Gaiman kick for a while. Somebody gave me a copy of The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which is a phenomenal book. It was kind of like the gateway book for me, because then I went into The Graveyard Book and then American Gods and Anansi Boys, which is just flat funny. I mean, I was reading it laughing out loud, which says way too much about me. There’s an Italian writer named Italo Calvino. He’s a real fave. A lot of his stuff is short, which makes it fun. From a poetry standpoint, Langston Hughes, the American poet. If you haven’t read Langston Hughes, you absolutely need to read Langston Hughes. But one of the things about my reading is that I like a lot of different stuff. I’m constantly picking up something new and usually being pleasantly surprised by it.
Q: If you could have any exotic pet, what would it be?
A: A penguin. To me, penguins are the coolest things. There’s just something about penguins that are really, really, really fun. It’s so funny to watch this thing that on land is kind of like ehh, then as soon as they get in the water, they just fly. There’s so much when you read about penguins, these things are just way cooler and way smarter than we are. I’d probably like an emperor penguin. But, I think it would be fun to have a variety of different penguins in your own ridiculously air conditioned place and just watch penguins be penguins.
Q: If you could meet someone dead or alive for 30 minutes, who would it be? What would you talk about?
A: These questions always scare me because my reaction is that I would pick a person I’ve always wanted to meet and two minutes in, they decide I was an idiot not worth talking to and spend the rest of the time playing on their phone. My gut reaction to this is one that nobody’s ever heard of. Bertrand Russell, who was a British author, philosopher and atheist in the mid 20th century who was just way too cool. If I’m going with someone people have heard of, I think Thomas Jefferson would be somebody I would like to talk to because the dude was just interesting in so many different areas.
Q: What advice would you give to your younger self?
A:I think the biggest advice that I would give my younger self is don’t wait. Don’t say, ‘Ok, I will be able to do this at a different time’ and therefore miss the experience. So many things that have worked out and been fun were things that I said, ‘I’m just going to do this.’ There’s times I think that I can be full of self-doubt about doing it, or not doing it. Boy, wouldn’t it have been more interesting to, instead of being worried about something, travel around Europe on $5 a day back when that was moderately possible?
