This weeks Random Teacher Profile features science teacher David Spence. We asked questions ranging from his native country, New Zealand, to which shoe he puts on first. Check out the full video and transcript below.
CoA: What is your favorite 80’s song?
Mr. Spence: Um…it’s going to have to be U2 […] so many great U2 songs […] probably Rattle and Hum.
CoA: Which shoe do you put on first?
Mr. Spence: I always put on my right shoe. […] You gotta put your right shoe on. I never trust anyone who puts on their left shoe first, to be honest.
CoA: Can you elaborate on your cat-killing days?
Mr. Spence: My cat killing days. Thank you for bringing that up because I have a lot of angst
about my cat-killing. So, I grew up on a farm, and on a farm, you view animals in a different way, you’re making money off animals. So we had two cats, one was mine and one was my brother’s. And cats are, we think they’re nice cuddly animals. But if they run out to the wild and have lots of kittens, those kittens go out and kill animals. So New Zealand has lots of native birds and my father was pretty explicit that we couldn’t have lots of kittens running around. And vets are expensive, so he was unwilling to pay the fee to get the cats spayed. So when the cats had kittens, it was my brother and my job to go down, one of us would distract the mother, the other one would grab the kittens and then we would have to kill the kittens. Eventually we complained, and then my father taught me how to spay a cat, with a sharp knife. That’s life on the farm.
Coat of Arms: All-Blacks or Wallabies?
Mr. David Spence: Oh, hello! Do you even have to ask? What a stupid question! All-Blacks all the way! Come on!
CoA: What is New Zealand’s national bird?
Spence: The kiwi.
CoA: Coke or Pepsi?
Spence: Definitely coke.
CoA: If you could have any superpower what would it be and why?
Spence: I’d love to fly. It would just be great to be able to see everything from the sky. Just to be able to jump up and go wherever you want to go.
CoA: Do you know what YOLO means?
Spence: What yellow means?
CoA: YOLO?
Spence: You speak [with] one of those crazy accents I don’t know what you’re saying. Is it yoyo, yellow?
CoA: It’s Y-O-L-O.
Spence: Y-O-L-O. Something like…well, it’s not like L-O-L…no, I don’t. The answer is I have no clue. Should I? [laughs]
CoA: It means you only live once.
Spence: Ah, thank you. I appreciate that [laughs].
CoA: What’s your most embarrassing moment?
Spence: Oh I have tons of embarrassing moments…do I really want to reveal them? When I was a junior in high school, a fair came to our local town, and they had these little mini motorcycles, I wanted to impress this girl that I liked, and I went around a corner super fast [on the motorcycle] and accidentally came off the course and crashed into my friends. I was a little embarrassed by that.
CoA: What’s your life motto?
Spence: I think always learning…never be afraid to keep learning. And don’t be afraid to make mistakes.
CoA: Thank you.
