Being able to teach Freshman and a college-prep Senior class is not an easy task to complete. However, our most recent employee, Mr. Austin Sill, fulfills all of the needs and expectations of this hard position.
It is important to be able to understand and get to know our teachers on a personal level, but when you’re a new teacher, that may take more time. So who is Mr. Sill?
First and foremost he’s a family man, “I married my wife Carissa in 2013. We have two daughters, Nova (5) and Raven (2). I have lived all over Southern California. (I have not lived in a house for more than 5 years since I was in elementary school)”.
Sill shares with us that although he is new to SDHS, he is not new to the profession. “This is my sixth year teaching full time. I have taught all grade levels from 7-12, and I have taught at four schools in three districts”.
Being a teacher is a challenge as it is, it takes a true passion to be able to fill the shoes of one everyday. However, Sill has always had a passion for it. Sill shares that he fell in love with literature his senior year of high school “after reading 1984 by George Orwell”. From then on his senior English teacher continued to feed his love for lit, “my senior English teacher started lending me books from his shelves, and within a couple months I read books by Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, and Stephen King that deepened my appreciation for the power of fiction. I officially decided to devote my studies to literature after my sophomore year of college.”
While Sill always knew he wanted to instruct, the high school level wasn’t always his goal. “My intention was to become a professor of literature, but shortly after graduating with my Masters in English, I decided to pursue a career in teaching English at the junior high and high school level because I wanted to have the same impact on students that my English teacher had on me. In a world where less and less people see reading as pleasurable, not to mention essential and instructive, we need English teachers who are passionate about reading to impact young minds”.
Knowing the love and passion that he has for all students, it was important to ask what insight he may have for them when it comes to being kind, knowledgeable, and successful.
Sill answered, “perhaps the most essential (and trite but true) reality we all need to confront is how limited our understanding of reality is. Even those of us with expertise in certain disciplines fundamentally know very little about the full breadth of reality. Science has actually demonstrated its own limitations.. for now. This should be humbling. A good education should help us to recognize there is a greater value in asking questions than in having all the answers. Questions expand. Answers close. Open yourself to the experience of intellectual and spiritual doubt and you open yourself to a deeper and broader perspective on reality.”
Adhering to guidance such as this can assist us in staying on our own paths and avoiding the detrimental influences that our generation may try to push upon us. Sill is often reminding us to be considerate of everyone around us and to be people of kindness.
To conclude our interview, I wanted to hear advice that Sill may wish to impart upon his freshman, and his graduating Seniors. For the freshman he wants to inspire them to “be curious. Resist elitism. Just because someone has different interests or a different taste than you does not make them “wrong.” He also implores them to not worry so much about “fitting in” but instead “opening up”.
For his Seniors, he encourages that “learning belongs to us”, and to “stay curious, and keep an open mind”.
It is obvious that Sill is a great addition to San Dimas High School because of his genuine concern, love, and heart for the students on our campus, in addition to his teaching abilities across several classes.
