– What do you teach at Pasco High?

I teach introduction to art, beginning painting and drawing, and intermediate painting and drawing.

– For how long have you worked at Pasco High?

This is my 3rd year here at Pasco High, but I’ve taught in the Pasco School District for 11 years now. Before I taught here, I taught art at Longfellow and Captain Gray Elementary school, so I didn’t move very far coming to Pasco High.

– What inspired you to become an art teacher?

I have always liked art, since I was a little kid, and we have a lot of teachers in my family; my mom was a teacher too, and so was my grandma, my sister and cousin. Because of that, I never wanted to be a teacher, since we already have so many teachers in my family, but I always liked art. Then I went to study fine arts at WSU and got my bachelors. A year after I graduated, I saw an open position for an art teacher at Longfellow Elementary, so I thought I’d give it a shot, and I ended up getting hired. I was really happy seeing the kids grow and improve their skills, and that kind of made me fall in love with teaching.

– Who’s your favorite artist?

I really like Mary Cassatt, her artwork show very quiet moments, and her own perspective as a mother. A lot of her paintings and drawings are about daily life with children. She illustrates them with a lot of care and detail, which I think is really beautiful. I also think the way she paints her light is really pretty, she’s an impressionist, and they focus mostly on light, and she does it in a kind of messy way, but it’s really nice. She’s probably one of the most famous female artists, and unfortunately, a lot of female artists tend to not get as much recognition.

– Before you decided to become a teacher, did you have another career path you were interested in?

Not really, I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do, but I really enjoyed art. I really liked video games too, so I had thought about potentially going into video games in the form of character design, but I hadn’t really thought too much of it before I got my job as a teacher. I didn’t plan too far ahead. Make sure you plan ahead though!

– What are your hobbies outside of school?

I like playing video games, and I have a dog that I like playing with a bunch. I also enjoy things like hanging out with family and friends. I like playing guitar and listening to music.

I play a video game called Street Fighter that I compete in. I go to tournaments and things like that with a bunch of friends I met through the game.

– What were you like when you went to high school?

In high school, I skateboarded a lot. I also like drawing, the art classes were probably my favorite. My least favorite classes were probably math or some kind of government class, they never interested me much. 

– Did you do any sports or extracurricular activities?

Yes, I mostly played football, but I also played some basketball and I did wrestling. My friends and I would always just play whatever was in season, so during spring we would play soccer, during winter we would play basketball, and if it was the fall we’d play football. Either at school or just for fun at a park.

Me though, I was kind of a moody teenager. Sometimes I would be happy, and sometimes I would probably be all depressed haha. I was a pretty normal teenager I’d say, I always wore a hat and had shaggy hair. Looked like a punk.

– What’s something that most people don’t know about you?

That’s a tough one, my middle name is Franklin, I guess that’s something most people don’t know about me. My middle name was named after my grandpa, he went by Pete, but legally his name was Franklin, so he gave me that for my middle name.

– What’s your favorite music artist or band?

I really like Led Zeppelin. I got into them in high school, because I was taking guitar classes, and I really liked Jimmy Page’s guitar and his abilities. I like SZA a lot too. It’s hard though, I like a whole bunch of genres, I just don’t like country that much. I grew up in a farming area, so country was on all of the radio stations except for one, so I think that has made me like country less, but I like most genres, I like rock, I like rap… 

– Where did you grow up?

I grew up in Basin City, it’s a very small farming village with only around 500 people in it, around 30 miles north of Pasco.

– If you could go anywhere in the world for free, where would you choose to go?

I’d like to visit either Japan or France. I’ve been to Spain, Portugal, and Morocco, and that was a lot of fun. I’d like to go to Denmark too. Or Sweden, Ireland, there’s a lot of countries I’d like to visit in Europe and Asia, but if I had to choose one, I’d probably say Japan.