(In all of my interviews, I use initials. I will be known as FM [Franie Martin] in this interview, and Mr. Kowalski will be known as MK.)
FM: How has your experience been at Oakwood so far?
MK: My experience here has been great, everybody here has been so nice and so welcomed, I feel supported by everyone here, and the environment here is very relaxed, but not in a chaotic way, everybody seems to be having a great time.
FM: Do you enjoy being a teacher here at Oakwood?
MK: I love being a teacher. I can’t think of another job tackling what I am most passionate about, and getting to spread that passion to the next generation of people.
FM: What’s your favorite part about history?
MK: My favorite aspect about it is that history is never irrelevant. You can look at any time period, any place, and find some way to better understand people and the world around you. I get the best advice from people who haven’t been alive in hundreds of years.
FM: Why do you like military history, specifically?
MK: Okay, so, um, two things. One, I grew up hearing stories of my family’s involvement in World War Two, and that makes certain parts of history very important for me. And the other thing that got me into history was my very own history teacher in 2004 or 2005. And this guy himself was ex-military, and he was a great storyteller, and he made history come alive, and there’s a lot of action that is appealing to a young man, but there’s importance in military history because it affects the whole fate of a country sometimes. War can be, of course, a very terrible and destructive thing, but there’s an ancient art to it that connects everybody who’s fought in a war. And that, in my opinion, makes history so fascinating, so cool.
FM: What do you think about the students here?
MK: I think the students here are…they seem like they are enjoying themselves tremendously, more than me noticing that they are gifted academically, and participating in morning meeting, SGA, clubs, and basically, they’re letting themselves have fun.
FM: Do you have a favorite movie or TV show?
MK: This is a tough one, this is a tough one. I think that if I was forced to pick, my favorite show would be Arrested Development. It’s a comedy show from the early 2000s. But I really have too many favorites to name just one.
FM: Do you have a favorite musical artist?
MK: favorite musical artist…oh, this one’s brutal, holy moly, you tell these people that I could talk about music for hours without stopping.
Limp Bizkut. and they were big when I was growing up. There’s a song called Break Stuff, that’s not school appropriate because of language, but it really sums it up. It has a great music video too.
FM: Do you have any pets?
MK: I have two cats and a parrot. I didn’t have pets growing up, and then I had cats in my 20s, and now I am a complete, head-over-heels cat guy. And my wife, she’s a zookeeper, and we have a bit of a zoo in our own house.
FM: Hobbies of any kind?
MK: I paint miniatures as a hobby, and I have a lot of nerdy hobbies, like board games and Warhammer, and I’m super into video games and anime.
FM: Do you speak any other languages besides English?
MK: I speak a lot of different languages. I speak German, and I speak a decent amount of Spanish, and I know the basics in Japanese, and a very basic level of Polish and Chinese. My dad is Puerto Rican, and my mom is from Poland, and I was always getting secondhand Spanish at home, but I took Japanese and Spanish in high school, and German in college. I spend a couple of months on Duolingo, and then try it out, and then I try something new.
My favorite book is Ender’s Game, but I have a deep love for The Lord of the Rings. Because I think that the OG Lord of the Rings movies are the best movies ever made, and as far as manga goes, my favorites are Berserk and then this obscure football manga called iShield 21.
FM: Do you have a preferred, favorite, or favorite foods?
MK: My favorite food has to be…It’s a stone tie between burgers and Luna Pizza, and sushi.
There you have it, dear readers, let’s give it up to our wonderful new English teacher, Mr. Kowalski.