By Olivia Svoboda

Editor-in-Chief

Robert Morgan is a new English teacher at South. Teaching wasn’t his initial plan, though.

“My original major was biomedical science, and then I realized that I’m terrible at science. So, I thought that maybe that was a bad idea,” Morgan said.

Luckily for Morgan, most English teachers don’t have to worry about science. When choosing a different major, he thought back to his high school teachers.

“I thought about the classes that I enjoyed the most which all seemed to be English, so I just decided that maybe that’s what I wanted to do. Maybe I wanted to have that impact on somebody else, hopefully the way that they impacted me,” he said.

Not only does Morgan get to have a positive impact on his students, but he also gets to do something he loves at work.

“I just love to read. I love to read; I love to talk about books with people. That’s one of my favorite things to do. Like, when I was really just thinking about what I wanted to do with my life, I just thought about how cool it would be to just read books and be able to talk about it with people and just share the love of literature with people. And get paid to do that,” he said.

The bookworm previously taught at Lexington High School before coming to South.

“I was working at Lexington for four years, and then just kind of decided that I just wanted a little bit of a change. It was also a far drive,” Morgan said.

Teaching in a bigger school district has brought Morgan an interesting switch.

“[Lexington is] a much smaller school district. So, there’s not as many people to rely on, other teachers and stuff like that. So, it’s nice to kind of have that support system,” he said.

The English I and II teacher went to high school at Waynesville High School in Waynesville, and he went to college at Missouri State University in Springfield.

Besides the usual teaching, Morgan would like to get more involved in the school when he gets settled. He’s talked with English teacher Mr. Esch about getting a board game club started.

“I love board games. I love to play board games and that would be really cool to just sit down with some kids after school and just play some board games with them. Back in Lexington, I did speech and debate. I was the assistant coach there. I’m not involved in that here, but that’s something that I’m interested in,” he said.

Morgan is excited to get into the groove of South culture and form relationships with students.

“Just like anything else, teaching is a continuous process. We’re never perfect and starting over at a new school here obviously has its challenges. And I’ve never taught freshmen and sophomores before. I was teaching juniors and seniors at my last school. So, just kind of continuing to improve, continuing to just improve on what I do. I love what I do, and I just want to keep working at it,” Morgan said.