Posted by It’s December 12th, 2024 at 9:57 a.m. in New Paltz High School. Jim Gill, high school history teacher, peeks through the door of 139 in his bright red sweater with a gentle smile. He reminds a student about their missing work, and says he’s ready for his interview.
“Sorry you couldn’t find me earlier, I was out. Finn guessed the first snow day, so I promised him food from the Convenient Deli,” Mr. Jim Gill says. He lays back against the maroon bench alcove in the side of the wall, ready to reveal some of his life that students may be unfamiliar with.
“My personal inspiration… is one of my younger brothers. He has special needs, but he’s never let that stop him,” Gill says, while describing his brother’s positive attitude while facing challenges. When they were younger, Gill wished that it was different for his brother, JP, and felt that he needed to protect him. However, in high school he realized that JP was one of the strongest people in his life.
“I had another younger brother who I went to high school with; this one time he came up to me and was like ‘Jim I gotta tell ya, so and so was bullying JP’ and I thought we had to do something but he said ‘we don’t – he took the guy and put him against the locker and said ‘you will not bully me!’ And dragged him to the closest classroom with the teacher and took care of it himself.” Gill said he had never felt more proud and knew that JP was not one who had to be protected.
“As a history teacher, my goal is to try to hook kids anyway I can because history has important lessons,” Gill says.
Jim’s passion for history and sports is very well known amongst his students and coworkers. “I feel like I am a member of the Boston Red Sox’s even though I’ll never be near good enough to play for them,” Gill chuckles.
Over the past few years, Gill has been passionately working on a writing project about sports over time and how they connect with history.
“I’m also thinking about starting one with music and how music can teach us about our history, but I really gotta get myself disciplined and finish off this first one,” Gill says. In the meantime he continues to teach students ways to connect pop culture with history.
“As a history teacher, my goal is to try to hook kids anyway I can because history has important lessons.”
Mr. Gill
“My students have taught me that different people need different things at different times,” Gill says. During summer school he teaches history for the students who need the credit for whichever reason they’re there.
“When I first started teaching I wanted everyone to understand the causes and effects of The Civil War or whatever the content was to a major level, but for some people they have a different understanding and respect for things,” Gill says. He believes that “success is different for everybody,” but he makes it his main goal to try to increase his students love and interest for history.
“As a social studies teacher in the country-and I can’t say too specifically of course-I am bit concerned,” he says.
Gill believes that values may be shifting in a way that’s new and potentially threatening to society. “As a social studies teacher, I teach about historical injustices and having to fight against those injustices no matter what.” He specifically noted Nazi Germany and the Jim Crow South–“I’m concerned that more and more people are disregarding that, like ‘no that was a long time ago; that would never happen again.”
Lately he thinks that people make their decisions for the short term and don’t fully digest the potential long term effects that could eventually repeat history.
“I’m up for the challenge, I’ll push back on it, but I’m just a little saddened that we have to do more than I thought we had to at this point,” Gill says.
The Maroon 