Junior high science teacher had no plans to be in the classroom
By David Blanchette
Alan Hallock found his true calling during the Great Flood of 1993, when his farm fields were washed out and he started to substitute teach to help make ends meet.
“I’m 69 years old and I don’t have to teach,” Hallock said. “But I love coming here every day.”
“Here” is the Jacksonville Middle School (JMS), which was called Turner Junior High School when Hallock joined the faculty as a full-time science teacher and scholastic bowl coach 20 years ago. During his years of substitute teaching Hallock taught a math practicum class in tandem with another JMS teacher and liked the school so much that he decided to apply for full-time work there after he went back to school to earn his teaching degree.
Hallock and another new teacher were both hired at the same time to teach seventh grade science and they both decided to teach the subject in an “interesting, fun and enjoyable way.”
“Science can be almost like magic but there’s something behind it. I would rather the students learn the science rather than just memorizing things,” Hallock said. “They can understand the things that are happening around them on the earth.”
Regardless of what career choice JMS students make later in life, making education enjoyable for them has long-term benefits. That’s important, Hallock said, because young people need to be well-informed about the opportunities that await them.
“When you’re in sixth, seventh or eighth grade you may think you know what you want to be when you grow up, but it doesn’t always work that way,” Hallock said. “For instance, I took agriculture classes, obtained a soil science degree, became a consultant and then went back to my family farm. All of that happened before I became a teacher.”
Hallock is also the coach of the JMS Scholastic Bowl Team, a position he took when he was hired in 2003. The team consists of students who use their knowledge to compete with students from other schools.
“I didn’t have a clue what a scholastic bowl was until I saw my first match as the coach in 2003,” Hallock said. “The previous year our team had won the state title, so there were high expectations coming into the position.”
Although the JMS Scholastic Bowl Team hasn’t yet repeated as state champions under Hallock’s leadership, they have won 18 regional titles and made it to the state finals five times, including one fourth-place finish.
Scholastic Bowl may sound like a game of trivia but it’s much more than that, Hallock said. The student team members can be asked about anything, and he has seen questions on everything including auto mechanics, history, cooking, language arts and quadratic equations. Some of the knowledge comes from what students learn in school, but more often it’s the result of a well-rounded upbringing where the students are exposed to many different experiences.
“I really enjoy seeing kids excel academically and am still amazed at some of the things they know that I’m certain they didn’t learn at school. Some kids are like a sponge, they literally soak up information from everything around them,” Hallock said. “It’s my job as the coach to select the five team members for each match based on what they may know. I can call two time outs and make team member substitutions, but other than that the kids literally run the whole thing, I just sit back and watch it happen.”
“There is a lot of respect shown between competing teams,” Hallock said. “When there’s a complicated math question, for instance, and you get that right you have impressed everybody in the room and they look at you like, ‘how did they get that answer so quickly?’”
There is no “Googling” in Scholastic Bowl, the participants can only use their brains to find the answer. But that brings up another issue facing educators today, the use of technology.
“Kids have more distractions than they did 20 years ago when none of them had cell phones,” Hallock said. “But we also use technology as a teaching tool here. I’ve gotten used to the smart boards in our classrooms and I can’t imagine teaching without those now.”
Hallock still lives on his Greene County family farm, and his 62 remaining acres along the Hillview-Eldred Blacktop are planted with lavender that he sells for dried flower arrangements and other commercial uses. He plans to continue that small-scale farming, which will give him something to do when he retires from teaching at the end of the next school year.
“Teaching will be difficult to walk away from, but I don’t have the endurance at 69 years of age that I used to,” Hallock said. “The amount of energy it takes to keep up with 12 and 13-year-olds is enormous. I go home exhausted every night.”
Hallock has no regrets about the post-flood, part-time job he took 31 years ago that blossomed into a late-life calling.
“I can’t imagine doing anything else,” Hallock said. “I truly love to teach.”
