Mr. John Mackin

Art by Celia Bergman

21 years of teaching at KHS

TKC: What are your retirement plans?

Mackin: I’m a jazz saxophone player so I’m going to spend a little more time with that. Plus, I teach aerospace engineering and there’s a company that I’ve worked with that does flight simulation and I might work with them some too.

TKC: What is your favorite memory at KHS?

Mackin: I worked for 16 years in corporate doing product development before I became a teacher. From the day I got here, the thing that has always struck me is that when you walk down the hall, even as a new person that has never been here, everyone smiles and they’re just supportive. The corporate world, people are just doing their job. Here, the environment is so different than there.

TKC: Have you worked in other districts?

Mackin: Just this one. I subbed at a few [districts], but my certification before I got my full-time job here, but it has been 21 years here, so a whole career.

TKC: What will you miss the most about KHS?

Mackin: I’ll probably miss the variety of students, because there are so many different personalities. It’s kind of fun getting to know the students over the course of the year and interacting with them.

TKC: What are you most excited for in retirement?

Mackin: Not living by 45 minutes and six minutes all throughout the day. And then also relearning how to eat lunch in over 12 or 13 minutes. It seems like as a teacher, you run and you eat and then back to work again.

TKC: What has been your favorite class to teach?

Mackin: I taught chemistry for almost 15 years before I taught anything else and then I had the opportunity to teach Aerospace [Engineering], because I’ve always liked space stuff. I grew up with the moon landing and all that kind of stuff. They both have been fun, but it was nice to do something different after doing the same class for so many years.

TKC: Do you live in Kirkwood?

Mackin: I live in Belleville, IL so it’s a 35 minute drive each way, all interstate, so it’s not really bad. Before I was a teacher, I worked in Afton at a candy company that made Sweet Tarts and other candies. I’ve always kind of driven that far. It’s going to be really weird to live within a four or five mile radius from my house as opposed to driving to St. Louis every day.

TKC: Do you feel like there is a strong sense of community in Kirkwood?

Mackin: Yeah, there really is. It’s a neat community. People really are supportive and interactive and they get behind causes. You go downtown and there’s lot of nice houses and shops to hangout at.

TKC: Will you return to Kirkwood after retirement?

Mackin: Probably not at first. I don’t know, I kind of want to wait and see where life takes me after I retire. I’ll wait and see what happens.

TKC: Is there anything else you would like to add?

Mackin: I want to say teaching is the hardest job I ever. It’s the hardest job I’ve ever done, but the rewards are great. It’s really a good feeling to know that you’ve helped students and helped them grow and develop. The other side of that though it that most teachers never know [what happens to students]. Unless somebody comes back and says ‘Hey, this is what I’m doing,’ you don’t know what happens to most of your students. You just hope that you set them on a good path and help them get to where they want to be.

TKC: How did you decide that you wanted to become a teacher?

Mackin: I looked at teaching early when I was in college and I really can’t remember why I got my degree and went out and got a job in business. I did that for 16 years, but I found that over the course of that time I was training people and the employees worked for me and I thought maybe I should look at [teaching] again and do something more to kind of give back. I’d created a number of products that were in the marketplace, some of them are still out there, so that’s kind of cool. I worked on some other candies and granola bars and fruit bars and stuff like that, but I thought I could do more. I took a year off and went back to school to finish my student teaching and all of the courses that I needed to do. That was kind of weird–– taking a year off when I was in my thirties. I’d already been working 8 a.m. to 5 a.m. every day for a decade and now all of a sudden, I’m back in school. I was on campus in the afternoon and other people were working, it was really different.