Have you ever wondered what your favorite teacher is up to outside of school? Do they spend every second with paper and pens, or do they spend time with friends? Find out in the first edition of teachers in the wild, featuring History teachers Timothy Glavin, Sean Chase and Patricia Halpin.

Timothy Glavin:

Living in a three-family home in Somerville with his two roommates, Glavin’s work day starts at 7 a.m. when he leaves for Wayland High School, and ends around 6 or 7 p.m. when he gets home. But when he’s off the clock, he enjoys sports and seeing friends.

“I like to run and I like to play soccer,” Glavin said. “On the weekend, I spend a lot of time with friends that live by me. We’ll either hang out, meet up somewhere or watch football at one of our houses.”

Glavin also spends time watching movies with his roommates, scrolling through social media and exercising when he can.

“I play in an all men’s [soccer] league on Tuesdays and a co-ed league on Thursdays,” Glavin said. “I play two to three days a week because I also play in an over 30’s league during the spring and fall. There’s only games [for the leagues], but I also play a decent amount outside [of the leagues] as well, whether I’m just by myself or with friends.”

After exercising, Glavin likes to relax with a cup of black coffee and eat his favorite meal: a chicken or eggplant parmesan sandwich. He likes to get some variety in his exercise, especially since in just a few weekends, he’s heading out to Montana with a group of friends to go skiing.

“Sometimes, my friends and I will go to do karaoke,” Glavin said. “I want to be clear, I’m not good, I’m just OK. But I do karaoke because it’s a really fun environment, and you get to see people fail, be really impressive and outside their comfort zone.”

Sean Chase:

As some of his students and players know, Chase lives right down the street from WHS, near local business Lavin’s Liquors. Chase likes to leave his house at 6:20 a.m. to get to WHS in time for a morning workout, then drive back home around 7:10 a.m. to pick up his kids before returning to school for the day.

“[School cancelation] days are actually more annoying to me than anything else,” Chase said. “I have to try to reschedule practices, whether it’s football or wrestling. If it’s a day of competition, then it’s rescheduling those and that becomes a pain in the neck. I’m basically answering phone calls and emails all day.”

Although Chase is irritated if school is closed without warning, he loves his free time during the weekends. While he loves being a coach, he embraces the weekends when he’s not coaching a sport.

“[During the weekend], I’m going to be on the water somewhere,” Chase said. “I do a lot of boating, fishing, surfing and I spent a lot of time underwater scuba diving. I always joke [that] ‘when I grow up, I’m gonna be a marine biologist.’”

Chase’s hobbies span far beyond the water. Because of his history knowledge, he was once offered a role in a reality television show by a former student of his in Lincoln. Unfortunately, the show never got up and running, but Chase does not need an audience to practice his hobbies. Some can be done in his own kitchen, like cooking for his family.

“I’m Chef Sean basically,” Chase said. “[My] favorite meal would easily be a grilled steak [cooked] medium rare. A fresh tomato salad, hopefully from my garden, and then a nice loaf of bread to sop up all of the juices of everything. That would be my ideal meal.”

Patricia Halpin:

While Halpin might be well-known by her students for her illegible handwriting, that might not be the only thing about her that students wish they could understand better. What goes on in a day in the life of Halpin?

As some know, she travels around an hour and a half to two hours most days to go to and from her house in Hancock, New Hampshire, all the way to WHS. Thankfully, she’s sometimes able to stay with family in Worcester, making the drive reasonably shorter.

“Given how early I get here, I was already at WHS [when we had the rain cancellation on Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2023],” Halpin said. “[History teacher David] Schmirer and I walked into a darkened building where only the hall lights were on and we sat in the hallway at desks with our computers. I actually ended up driving back to New Hampshire and got back around 10 a.m.”

Since Halpin lives a great distance from school, she isn’t able to enjoy weather cancellations as much as some others, but she still has a full and fun weekend, either on Long Island with her partner or at home in New Hampshire.

“If I’m not in Long Island, I live on a river, which is pretty cool,” Halpin said. “I really like to be outside considering how much I’m usually correcting or planning [schoolwork] inside. There’s a lot of maintenance on my property and I have a wood stove, so I can never have enough firewood.”

Halpin might be the opposite of what some would expect of her. She owns chainsaws and routinely chops up fallen trees in the forest by her house. She calls it “constructive destruction” and says it’s good to keep her mind from “exploding.” She raves about the fun of cutting wood up, and mentioned that she usually has an ax in her car, just in case she needs to cut wood away from home.

But that’s not the end of Halpin’s surprising life. She has very particular food preferences that even some of her friends and coworkers find humorous.

“[History teacher Katherine] Bassen says that I have the palate of a six-year-old,” Halpin said. “I just like to keep it simple. Butter noodles run high on my list [of favorite foods]. But if I could live on one food item that would have all the sustenance I needed, it would be chocolate chip ice cream. It’s not healthy, but it’s definitely a comfort food.”