Lesson plans from life
You just finished a timed-write in English 12 and AP English Language and Composition teacher Anna Hubbard’s class. There’s time left on the clock and your eyes mindlessly wander around the room, finding countless pictures of glistening lakes and lush forests that adorn the classroom walls.
Hubbard enjoys traveling and taking photos, a hobby she began at a young age.
“My parents gave me this really cheap camera,” Hubbard said. “This is back before digital cameras, so you had to go in and print the film, but I’ve always loved it and just trying to find the best angle.”
Whether her destinations are domestic nature spots such as the Grand Canyon and Havasu Falls or international attractions like Europe and Tahiti, she finds these experiences capable of nurturing an objective outlook on society.
“I think perspective is, to me, the most important aspect of travel,” Hubbard said. “It doesn’t matter where you live and what you’re doing and what you know and what you’re familiar with. Going even an hour away and doing something somewhere else, it’s just different from what you know … the farther away you go, the more you go outside of your comfort zone, the more you have the opportunity to open your eyes and learn about other people, and the more that helps you kind of reflect honestly on yourself and your culture and where you live and what that looks like.”
For Hubbard, this realization is especially relevant today.
“Sometimes we get so fixated and we have our blinders on,” Hubbard said. “And I feel like [travel is] a way that isn’t confrontational and yet forces people to kind of look outside of themselves.”
While Hubbard has not traveled internationally as much recently due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the birth of her son, she still enjoys visiting national parks and taking road trips. Within the classroom, Hubbard’s experiences affect the way she communicates to her students.
“One of the biggest things I always like to tell my students is there’s a big world out there outside of what we do in this class, there’s a whole world of learning that is out there, and so I always try to encourage them to explore, see the world, take the opportunities, especially when you’re younger,” Hubbard said.
Being an English teacher and a passionate reader, many of Hubbard’s trips are inspired by literature. Similarly, the trips influence her lessons in return, creating a full circle.
“I had done a Grand Canyon River rafting trip, and I bought a bunch of books about different stories of the river, and I got obsessed with it that summer,” Hubbard said. “But I found this great quote … and it was a preface to a story about two individuals who disappeared rafting down the Colorado River. So I think one of the best things about travel is that while I’ve done that, I’ve learned different things or come across different ideas like ‘that would be kind of cool to bring into the classroom and teach,’ in addition to just continuing to impart that message of get out there, see the world [and] see things from a different perspective.”
Among the countless locations Hubbard has explored, her favorite is Lake Powell, where she used to stay frequently with her family.
“For my entire childhood, starting from the time I was 3, my family [and I] spent a lot of summers in Lake Powell, which is not far from here … and we’ve done boating trips,” Hubbard said. “And for me, it’s just such a huge part of my life. And I think what I love about it, and this is another thing I kind of tell students about travel, is [going] to places where there’s no cell service, where you have to just completely unplug and be present.”
Like Hubbard, Brandon Keller, English 11 teacher and Yearbook advisor, saw his hobby of travel direct the experiences he intends to provide to students.
“I think [travelling] kind of opens your eyes to how people are the same everywhere, and then we have the same things that we love and appreciate,” Keller said. “Everyone likes good food, beautiful art, beautiful architecture and just being around other people. I try my best to try to introduce that to my class as best as possible.”
Every year, Keller creates lessons around The New York Times’ 52 travel destinations list. Through this, he encourages students to research new regions and think about where they would like to travel.
“I try to bring my experiences whenever we’re talking about novels; it can be really helpful to bring first hand accounts,” Keller said. “[For example], I teach the book ‘The Sun Also Rises,’ which takes place in Paris and Spain and other places along the road, and I try to [take] pictures and stories from places that I’ve been to as well.”
Keller and Hubbard are not the only teachers who see their personal hobbies evolving into building blocks of their curriculum.
Viviana Alvarado, Spanish 4 and AP Spanish Language teacher, often incorporates art into her classes.
“I love painting,” Alvarado said. “Since I was in high school, I used to draw anime in high school, just for fun, not that I took any classes or anything. But then in college, I started taking classes with a private teacher on the weekends while I was getting my degree in teaching.”
Alvarado assigns artistic projects such as rock painting and holiday sweater drawings — colorful student artworks that fill every corner of her classroom.
“I feel like I love colorful things,” Alvarado said. “So flowers [and] nature in general, but I also follow a lot of people on Instagram, a lot of artists. I like the type of art that is not super realistic, more abstract and very colorful and happy.”
Much like Alvarado’s lasting companionship with painting, Keller also traveled throughout childhood, though the hobby truly habituated after he met his wife.
“I was lucky enough [because] my dad, for his work, traveled a lot, and because of that, my family had opportunities to travel a lot when I was much younger,” Keller said. “But honestly, I didn’t travel a lot as an adult until I met my now wife, who is also a teacher, so we have summers [and] spring breaks off. And with these opportunities, we just looked at each other like, ‘we have to travel.’ We have no choice. We have this time off that so many people don’t.”
Keller travels to Mexico often, but has also traveled to Europe, Asia, Istanbul and many other countries and continents. Among his many vacation spots, Keller has a favorite.
“We just both love Paris,” Keller said. “It has a really special place for us, obviously, because it’s so beautiful and all the art and everything like that. But we also both love the Lost Generation of the 1920s so we love retracing the strips of Hemingway through Paris. And also it’s just the most amazing place on Earth with great food and culture.”
As a fan of “The Sun Also Rises” by Ernest Hemingway, Paris particularly inspired Keller. While in Paris during a winter break, he did a “Hemingway’s walk” through the city, where he visited the author’s favorite locations and additionally explored the Latin Quarter of the city, in which “a big part [of the book] [took] place.”
“[It was] this really magical night, because my wife is also an English teacher and loves that book as well,” Keller said. “So that definitely played a huge part in me wanting to go there. And actually, the trip this summer is also inspired by ‘The Sun Also Rises,’ where they also go to places like Donostia-San Sebastian, Biarritz and Pamplona and all these really cool, interesting places. So definitely, reading about a place first can ignite a passion for it and make you really want to travel there.”
It is common for travelers to accumulate some sort of collection that serves as a record of their voyages. For Keller, that is collecting magnets. Keller is a detailed planner when it comes to voyages; from flight tickets to researching the best local restaurants, he methodically gets to know each area.
“I still buy Lonely Planet books for every single place we go,” Keller said. “I read the entire thing, and I have my Google Maps out, and I save all the locations I want to go to, be it tourist attractions or restaurants or even researching places to stay … I know it’s all online, but it’s just kind of overwhelming, because the internet has everything, [but] these books have a finite amount of pages. I’m not overwhelmed by so much information, and that’s a huge part of how I plan.”
Keller and his wife plan to tour the Basque Country of Spain and France this summer. Throughout the year, they play the “Credit Card Points game,” where they create a travel credit card and attempt to collect as many points as possible to use them for travelling instead of paying out-of-pocket.
“We’re teachers: we’re not like multi-millionaires,” Keller said. “The big way that we can travel every summer is we’re really intentional with our credit cards and how we spend our money. Now, the trick is, you have to be very responsible and pay them off immediately, because you can get in debt if you take a bunch of credit cards out … but we like to have things that we track it with. We’re always on top of it, and it’s always just like this dance of how can we get points from these hotel credit cards, airline credit cards and things like that.”
Many of the travel destinations have been inspired by talking to students, according to Keller.
“… We went to Turkey a couple years ago, and there’s a lot of Turkish students at Torrey Pines, and we were trying to decide what other places to go,” Keller said. “Turkey is huge, and there’s so much to see. And we actually made our decision based on talking to students and asking them, ‘so when you go every summer to Turkey, where do you go?’ And they’re like, ‘Oh, we go to Bodrum’ or ‘Oh, we go to Antalya, and all these places.’”
As special as these hobbies are to them, teachers integrate them into lesson plans in hopes that students will obtain a likewise remarkable range of takeaways.
“I think [students] remember [the art projects] more than maybe writing a paper or something like that,” Alvarado said.
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