Many of our teachers have very interesting lives both in and outside of school, one of these being AP World History teacher Mr. McCullough. In this article, we asked him a few questions to learn more about his career aspirations, interests, and much more!
What do you think is your best memory from teaching here at Northport?
Just working with the students. I can’t pick one, but you know working with young people is great. It’s memorable. A lot of funny things happen in class, so I don’t know. Every year’s got its memories.
What are your passions outside of school?
My family, I’ve got a good family, children, my wife; I feel blessed for my family. I have an old house, so I do carpentry work a lot. I just started taking guitar lessons. I wouldn’t say I’m passionate about it but I still enjoy it. I used to play golf. I don’t play golf anymore. I like fishing, and that kind of outdoor activity.
What would you say is your favorite food?
Chicken parm, you can’t go wrong with chicken parm.
What made you decide to go into teaching?
I used to be a manager at this golf course and I worked with young people, like teenagers and I got along with them well. I’ve always wanted to do teaching in the back of my mind. Working there, I was their boss and I feel like I get along with the teens there. I felt like I had to teach anything it could be something I could pursue. Plus, I was getting married. I didn’t have a job or career. So that’s probably the biggest motivation was because I wanted to have a family, I wanted a career.
What does “Holla” mean?
“Holla” actually goes back to jazz. It was a part of a jazz song a long time ago. It’s from African-American culture. It’s like an exclamation point, to end something.
What drew you to teach AP World?
Management just gave it to me. You don’t have a choice. I was a new teacher, and no one wanted to do AP courses because it was a lot of work, even though teachers all get paid the same essentially. There was no incentive to do it. I was there and there was no one else that would do it.
Do you have a favorite historical person or period?
I like imperialism, that time period where different cultures are coming together. I find it interesting because you can see the modern world in imperialism, specifically in India and China with different cultures coming together. I also like wars. I’ve always found it interesting as a kid, especially the Cold War especially because it was happening during my childhood you know.
Do you have a certain favorite celebrity or comedian?
I like Dave Chappelle a lot. He’s funny. I like Russell Crowe too; he’s a great actor. I like movies just like everybody else, but as a celebrity, I don’t follow Hollywood too much. I always thought Russell Crowe is a good actor, and I like his movies.
What is your best classroom moment?
Memorable moments, especially silly things that kids have said and funny moments. Brief things too. We used to do a lot more projects which were fun. I liked it back then, but now the test is so competitive, and it’s hard to get through the curriculum, but we had some cool activities we did. For example, we did a Mongol round table once. Now the test is such a big thing in education that the test is everything. Years ago It wasn’t as much and you had more time to do activities, but some of those activities were memorable. But mostly the stuff kids have said, funny things that you remember that the kids said that made everybody laugh.
If you couldn’t be a teacher, what would you be?
I like doing things with my hands, I do carpentry. I’d like to work with my hands and create things. I mean, I enjoy stuff like that. So I think maybe something in carpentry I probably would have gravitated towards if I didn’t go into teaching, but teaching is a much more secure job. That’s why I chose it.
Do you have any favorite movies or a book or film?
My favorite book is probably Crime and Punishment.
What is your favorite type of bread, cake, ice cream, and pickle?
For bread I would have to go to Tuscan bread. That would be my favorite bread. It’s similar to Italian bread. Cake, an old school Duncan Heinz box cake they call it. Which is an out-of-the box, old-school cake. Pickle I go with the dill pickle, just an old school, classic deli dill pickle.
What was your favorite year to be alive?
1989 was great. That was when the wall came down. I remember the Tiananmen Square protests were going on. That’s how big of a year it was when Communism was falling. It was a history teacher’s dream, right? I was 17, I was young, and I was interested in what was going on in the news, because it was such a monumental year. There are a lot of protests in the world. You felt like a big change was going to happen and it did. So you really felt history alive in your life because the Cold War was ending, and a lot of parts of the world were becoming free.
It was very optimistic about what could, different from our period. It was a great time to be young at 17, especially how it started my life. That’s probably why I got interested in history. I will always like history, but 1989, If you like history, that was a year.
Learning more about one of our favorite teachers was a super cool experience and we hope to complete more teacher interviews in the future. What teacher should we interview next? Let us know in the comments!
