Student intern Thomas Mayo joined the DIS community under the tutelage of Ms. Loustch. His suspenders keep the ninth graders and creative writing class in great suspense. Mr. Mayo sheds light on his hobbies and guilty pleasures, with a touch of philosophy layered in between. He spilled the tea with the Flyover staff for over an hour. 

Your first day at DIS, the stars were aligned. Tell us about lunch. 

If you want to go the literary route, chicken mayo and I were star-crossed lovers — fated to happen but going to have a tragic ending. Chicken mayo’s no longer on the menu, and I’m leaving. 

What drew you to DIS?

I’m in my final semester of university and I had the option to do student teaching abroad. I only had two options: Alaska and here in South Korea, specifically at DIS. Teaching internationally is one of the goals of mine, so coming here aligned with that. Plus, I always wanted to see Korea. 

What do you like most about DIS? What are some surprising things? 

I’d have to say the size. I come from Maine, and there’s a lot of small schools there. So, I’m very comfortable here in this small school. I think something else that surprised me is how, this part comes from my own college life, living in the dorm — I don’t have a dorm roommate. 

What is the best and worst part of teaching?

The students. 

No, the best part? The part that I enjoy the most is seeing the students trying to learn a new concept. If they’re struggling with it, coming in and just giving that little nudge they need and watching it *snap* click and eyes wide open like, “Oh I get it now” like that Danny DeVito meme…that’s one of my favorite things. 

I also enjoy a little outside of class time, learning about students too — like them as people is one of the best parts of teaching. Especially if you get a student that has interests that align with yours, and you’re further along with that interest — you get that mentor protégée relationship with them. There’s a couple of students that I like talking philosophy with. It’s fun. I usually pitch something at them and either watch them look confused at me or have their brains explode. 

Apart from that, grading. Grading sucks. I don’t like it, but you have to do it. I can’t speak for other disciplines, but depending on the paper for English, it can be tedious. But if it’s something like a personal narrative, it’s a bit more fun and creative. But it depends. 

What’s your favorite project you’ve done with the students? 

For ninth grade, I would say for sure my favorite lesson — they probably won’t agree — is doing the conformity short stories with them like The Lottery. Especially just watching them go like “why? Why’d they do this thing?” We just moved onto a new unit and read The Most Dangerous Game. Some of them loved it, some of them hated it, some of them loved it but hated the ending. I enjoy just reading those quick, little short stories and seeing their reactions.

What’s your take on conformity? 

It’s good and bad, depending on the context it’s in. When it comes to a broader, societal sense, yes, you need conformity in order for society to function because conformity means that you are conforming and following laws, morals, ethics, and things such as that. But when it comes to bandwagoning, groupthink, and stuff like that, it can be dangerous. This unit talks about that, the dangers of conformity. 

I think it’s necessary. It’s human nature, we’re social beings, we need to conform. We don’t want to step out of the group. But sometimes you have to be the one that breaks away from the herd. 

Are you a conformist? 

Yeah, I would say 60 to 70 percent conformity for me. I used to just go with the flow wherever I went. But now I’ll give my opinion — it’s something I’ve learned to do. 

How do you personally go about warming up to students? 

Learning about them, that’s the first thing. Just like building any relationship, you learn about who they are, their little quirks and hobbies, and things that they enjoy. Some students warm up quicker than others. I mean, personally, I’m pretty introverted, so I’m slower to warm up with people. 

I kind of stole this note from Mr. Hinkle of just standing in the hallway and seeing students as they walk by. In America, you have to do that, stand in the hall, because there’s fights and stuff like that.

Are you spending any time in lunch clubs ASAs or sports?

The lunch clubs I am spending time with are Ms. Loustch’s. Whenever they come here, I usually listen to them talk and sometimes pitch an idea or two. 

Writing club is nice because it’s nice lying down, winding down on a Friday. You’ll find English teachers divided into two categories: you have your English teachers that read and your English teachers that write. I’m the English teacher that writes. 

The one I enjoy the most is probably, Flyover. I love, as Mr. Lipsky says, the “buzz” of the newsroom. There is a weird joy I get tearing apart students’ articles and helping them put stuff back together. Giving them an idea or a twist on something and watching them go “bwoah, I didn’t think of that.” I’m like “all right, that’s why I’m here.”

What do you like about being the co-advisor of Jets Flyover? 

I think the big thing is spending time with the students — especially students that I just don’t have classes with. It’s nice to spend time with Mr. Lipsky and work together — granted I don’t do much, he does the brunt of the work. I just patrol around the room like some secret police. 

Do you prefer being called intern, student teacher, or anything else? 

It doesn’t really matter to me. I’ve heard it all. In Maine, at least in my university, it’s called “student teaching.” So it threw me off first when I came here and they were like “oh look you’re the new intern,” and I’m like “intern? I’m a student teacher.” Then I was like “oh okay, intern also means student teacher out here.” 

We heard you love Korea, tell us about it. 

I love life here. I mean, growing up in the middle of nowhere Maine, it’s a completely different experience. I’ve never left the United States. Closest that I’ve been to another country was Canada, and I didn’t cross the border. I love it here. The culture, the food, sites, sounds, smells, I mean it’s just so different in a good way. It’s refreshing. I haven’t had a bad experience here yet.

I heard you got stuck in the dorm elevator when you first got here. Describe that situation and how that impacted your first impression of life here. 

I think it was my second week here — it was during the staff in-service week. I was taking the elevator from the fifth floor — my dorm room — down to the first floor. Everything was fine, and then I went down to the first floor and the doors didn’t open on the elevator. 

So I was like, “Oh great wonderful” and pressed the elevator call button. It screamed at me in Korean, and I was like, “Ahh, I have no idea what it just said.” So I thought, “Alright, I’ll stand here for a minute.” 

Two minutes in — I wasn’t worried or anything like that — and I was like, “I’m going to see if I can open the doors.” Then I pried the doors open a little bit and saw all the cleaning ladies standing there and looking at me — at my face in between the elevator doors. I said, “door’s stuck” and then let go because I already broke the elevator, I didn’t want to break it even more. 

Then I waited another thirty seconds. I’m like, “ah, heck with it. I’m going to get out of here. I’m busting out.” I just pried the doors all the way open and I stepped out. Mr. Gum and Ms. White were there along with all the cleaning ladies and Mr. Gum was like, “Wha-WHAT” and it was pretty funny. 

I wasn’t worried or anything like that. It didn’t impact my impression of life here. Should I expect every elevator to break on me here? It’s just an oddity that happened. It’s not like I had the impression that Korean elevators were bad or this is how my entire year’s going to go. 

What’s your favorite Korean food? 

I’m going to be honest, I’ve forgotten half the names of the stuff I’ve eaten here. I can tell you it’s all good though. But I have to say bibimbap is probably my favorite — good stuff right there. 

Where do you see yourself in five years?

Hopefully teaching internationally. Where internationally? Not sure. I would like to stay here in East Asia though. I like it around here. 

The big question everybody’s waiting for: hunting. Tell us about it. 

I didn’t realize it was that big of a thing here like in the school when I told people I’m a hunter, they were all like “woah.” Well, first of all, in the United States, it’s called a sport. Haha, no it is a hobby. 

Hunting is a very like father-son tradition — father passes it down to their son and so on and so forth. So my father passed it onto me. At least in the state of Maine, I could not legally hold a firearm until I was 10-years-old but I was six years old, out in the woods with my dad, hunting with him — not with a firearm, just company. Those are my fondest memories.

When I turned 15 is when I kind of lost my feel for hunting. I took the more pacifist side of it. I didn’t see the point in killing an animal when you can go to the supermarket and get all of that. So I just stopped hunting for a few years, but I still would help my dad out. 

But it wasn’t until when I was 20, I got back into hunting again. I reconciled some things in my life and my personal self. I saw the good parts of hunting, like how humanity has hunted so many predators that we have to step up and become that predator. 

In the United States humans, particularly when colonists came over, we overhunted so a lot of species have disappeared — particularly a lot of predators have disappeared like wolves. If humans just stopped hunting, then particularly white-tailed deer populations would explode, and that means that the government would have to come in and start doing that. 

There’s two different major schools of thought in hunting. You have your meat hunters and you have your trophy hunters — people who only go for the hides, the racks, and antlers but not the meat. That’s what I only saw hunting as — not because of my dad— but that’s how I viewed it as. But I learned that it’s more than that. It’s a great way to get out into nature and walk around and hike and get into nature. Strangely, there’s a lot of beauty in the thrill of the hunt. 

I feel connected to my father, who’s a big role model and figure in my life. I feel connected to nature and the outdoors, which has been a huge influence on me, and I feel it’s important for people to understand where their food comes from. 

I haven’t gotten any animals. The only thing I’ve hunted successfully were squirrels. So there is that fair chase aspect of it, I’ve seen deer out hunting, and I’ve passed them up. I had no desire to hunt them. It’s a weird balance when it comes to hunting. It’s hard to describe unless you’ve either given me plenty of time or you’ve done it yourself. 

What are some things that no one would have guessed about you? 

One of my biggest passions is cooking. I’m big into culinary arts. Especially sharing it with people. I love watching and having people eat my cooking and enjoy it. I really stick with Western food mostly. Usually, it’s a recipe that catches my eye — especially a challenging recipe. I love making everything. I’ll make everything from scratch. Like, if it has dough, I’ll make the dough from scratch. Then I’ll be lazy after that. First time I go all out, and then I’ll go buy dough from the stores to make it. 

I’m pretty good at making gnocchi — particularly gnocchi with a Parmesan cream sauce that has little chunks of chicken and veg in it. One spoon will fill you up. That’s how rich it is. It’s good winter food. 

I can cook, but I can’t bake. Like 98-99 percent of the time, I can’t bake, and that 1% it comes out: perfection — you see sparkles coming out of it and everything. Then I just mess it up again.

I’m a gamer. I like games — all kinds of board games, card games, video games. I was big into Call of Duty in my high school years — I was part of a clan and everything. Yep, I was one of those people… From games that really make me think to the games that shut my brain off. 

Secret guilty pleasure?

Debbie Swiss rolls. I take those and put them in the freezer, and they turn into an ice cream sandwich. That’s pretty good. 

You are better dressed than most teachers here, explain your fit. 

I don’t know, it’s drippy, right? I can say this because I’m 25 and for the majority of my life, I dressed like crap. My mother dressed me up until the point where I could start dressing myself. I’m like, “I don’t care how I look” so I just threw on whatever worked. I could have mismatched socks, shoes and colors colliding. People get their first impressions off of, usually, how someone presents themselves and how they look. I caught on to that towards the end of my high school career. So, I started dressing better. 

You probably saw me during spirit week, wearing jeans and my plaid flannel — that’s usually my go-to of how I dress. A little secret, in Maine, flannels are kind of seen as formal wear in a lot of places. 

I also enjoy just dressing up. It makes me feel like I’m a bit more confident. 

Another thing too is particularly here at DIS, there is a teacher dress code. I’m only here for a little bit, so I wasn’t able to bring all of my clothes, so I have a very limited wardrobe. I asked Miss Loustch before, and she said, “It’s just like America.” So I thought I could wear jeans and stuff but I came out here and yep, no jeans, nothing like that. 

Plus, suspenders are the genetically superior way to hold up pants. We can argue about that all day. Wear suspenders one day and tell me. I can tell you too because I spent most of my life wearing a belt, and then I threw on a pair of suspenders, and I was like, “This is it.” Why would you cinch something onto your waist when you can just hang it from your shoulders? 

Put a name on your genre of fashion style.

Dressy casual. 

What’s your favorite book of all time? 

I spent so many hours trying to think of a book because I’ve forgotten half the stuff I’ve read. 

Favorite book of all time is Hatchet, the entire series. 

It was some of the first higher-level books I read in fourth grade. Plus because of all the outdoor aspects, I think I had a really deep connection with it. I read Brian’s Winter and The River. I don’t like The River as much so I usually skip over that one if I reread the series. Then Brian’s Return and Brian’s Hunt. 

Where the red fern grows is another one. 

You’ll cry. For some reason, they read that to fourth graders. I’m like “Ahh, waah” — these are like deep sobs. I was crying at the end of that, twice. I got the book at a book fair and then as a whole class novel. I liked the book so much I read ahead of the class, cried, and then my teacher finished the book and I cried again. 

Any last words? 

Bye. 

With his passion for the lightbulb moments in student understanding, Mr. Mayo’s impact suspends the relationships he forged at DIS. This might serve as a launchpad for Mr. Mayo’s bright career path. The Jets Flyover staff wishes him the best in his future endeavors.