Don’t know which Menlo teacher runs Mock Trial? Don’t know which guy always reps MMT? Find out more about him!
Alex Edidin | Staff Reporter
Zoey Lieberman | Staff Reporter
Photo courtesy Dan Devitt
CoA: What’s your favorite TV show?
DD:I have to say the Wire as one of my favorite all-time shows. Currently, I’m a big fan of Walking Dead, that’s my secret passion. My secret passion is secret zombies. (laughs) So it’s the Wire for all-time and Walking Dead for secret zombies.
CoA: Any least favorite teacher stories when you were a kid?
DD: As you probably can imagine, I was not the most rule-abiding student. I guess when I put a mustache on my teacher’s replica of Garfield the Cat, that was probably one of the lower moments of my high school career because my teacher got very upset by that. I hated Garfield the Cat, and I continue to hate Garfield the Cat, can’t stand him, not because he’s a chubby cat but because he’s a cat. I tended to drive my teachers crazy, as I’m sure you can’t imagine.
CoA: What was the funniest moment of your teaching career?
DD: I started off my career at Juvenile Hall in San Francisco-I was a young teacher, I was trying to be all serious. This was with a group of pretty tough kids and I was sitting on these individual desks, where you have the desk attached to the desktop. And I was sitting on the desktop when I was giving this big serious, talk, and I started slipping, and didn’t feel it until too late completely flipped over the desk and landed on my but in front of all of these kids.They proceeded to not let me forget that for a very long time. That was the first lesson that demonstrated to not take yourself so seriously all of the time.
CoA: What is your most embarrassing moment?
DD: In the second school I worked at, first year there, I managed to book a trip to DC for 14 kids and 4 days before we were supposed to leave, I realized that I forgot to include airfare in the cost to the parents – I thought it was included! Didn’t sleep the whole night and somehow 9 kids still went on the trip although the others lost their deposit when they dropped out. Thank god I am much more organized these days as a teacher (cough cough).
