For the past 31 years, Mr. Dan Quinn has served at Saint Francis as an educator and is currently a teacher for AP English Language and Composition and a Campus Minister for Mission Formation. He is also an assistant coach for varsity football. Through his work in and out of the classroom, he works to inspire students to be comfortable challenging their own and others’ thinking. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
The Lancer: Growing up, what was your experience as a student from high school to university?
Mr. Dan Quinn: I come from a large family, so the expectations for my performance were set by my older siblings. We were all very similar academically in school, so it was assumed that we were going to perform well enough in school to then matriculate to college. Saint Francis was a great place for us, so we all did fairly similarly across the board… I loved school. I think I realized that one of the decisions to become a teacher was because I liked school so much. I don’t know if I really recognized how much I liked school until I was in college, not that I didn’t like it because Saint Francis is a great place for all sorts of reasons. School didn’t come easy per se, but it wasn’t necessarily overly difficult. That was the ’80s; I don’t think things were as hard back then. I always did well enough, and it was just sort of this automatic notion that we would go to college. College admissions wasn’t quite as competitive back then either, but the assumption was we would keep going. Saint Francis had a lot to offer both in the classroom and outside the classroom, so the experience was really good. I think when I moved to college there was that uncertainty of how smart I was in that setting. I learned where my strengths and my weaknesses were, so for example, I didn’t necessarily realize I was a writer until I got to college. I did really, really well in my English classes, and I was interested in either science or literature at the time, and I did better in English than I did in science—not much, but I did better in English, so that kind of tipped the scales for me in the long run.
TL: What makes Saint Francis special to you as an educator, and how do you think it reflects in students’ experiences?
DQ: I think what makes Saint Francis really special is—well, I’ll start with the community. I think that community comes from what the Brothers established for us way back when. The idea of mission, like having a mission, and governing the entire community by that mission, so all the decisions from top-down reflect the values of the mission statement. I think that was something that we didn’t have, it wasn’t overt when we were here, so the Brothers didn’t talk about Holy Cross, they didn’t talk about mission, but it was lived, not only through the Brothers, but through all the teachers that taught me. I found that really amazing to be here, particularly in the later ’90s when we started really talking about this idea of mission. And at that point, I was a teacher. They handed these mission statements, these draft mission statements, to us, and I read them and I thought, this is perfect. This is what I’ve known since I’ve been a little kid. To look back and realize that somehow the Brothers can have infused this mission into the lay teachers. So the teachers that I had, because I was taught by a couple of Brothers, but there weren’t that many actually actively teaching in the classroom by then. But to see that it was infused in all these other teachers, and that’s part of my job now is to kind of see how that transfers over to all the new teachers that are coming in, who may have no idea what Saint Francis or Holy Cross is, and to try to kind of bring that element of mission into their lives so that they want to adopt and live it and be here, part of this community as it continues to grow.
TL: What do you like to do outside of the classroom?
DQ: I love to cook. That’s a new hobby of mine.
TL: The sourdough?
DQ: Yeah, that’s the newest, the latest work I’ve been doing. I love to learn to cook, so I spend a lot of time in the kitchen, particularly once football season’s over, trying to learn new things to cook. And then I play guitar. If I have two hobbies, music would be one of them, and then this new hobby of working in the kitchen and cooking.
TL: Do you have a favorite dish to cook?
DQ: I do. I love chile verde. It’s a Mexican recipe that got it all started, so that’s my favorite thing to actually do. I don’t do it that often.
TL: Could you explain your teaching philosophy and how you exemplify it in your teaching?
DQ: Oh, that’s a loaded question. So I’ve been influenced by a lot of really good teachers, and so part of me thinks I have to prepare these kids for the next level, right? So, how do I get kids to think and to write more deeply, so that when they become seniors and become freshmen in college, they have a better command of what they’re trying to do? That’s not easy. I think it’s hard to teach writing. So I think part of my philosophy is to just try to push the level of thinking in a classroom, ask questions that are going to force students to confront challenging issues, challenging topics, challenging elements of literature, to get them to think and then to work on how to deal with clarity of language and with precision of thinking, you know, how do they communicate those ideas on paper. But that comes from trying to produce an environment where students feel comfortable enough to challenge themselves, to challenge each other, and to sort of be willing to take the risks. That’s also not easy to do. Because it can be hard to get kids to feel comfortable enough to criticize themselves, to criticize each other, to challenge each other’s thinking, as opposed to just wanting to make sure they have the right answer, because there really is not necessarily a right answer. It’s about how we think and, and articulate.
TL: What is the most rewarding and most taxing part of your job?
DQ: I think the most taxing part is, we’re always on, you know, we have to plan and then we have to execute plans every day. It’s not just showing up and kind of mindlessly doing a job. It’s realizing that I’m working with personalities, interacting with humans. That’s constant. And then to be able to do that also outside of the classroom when I have to grade. So I’m actually interacting with students when I’m grading work and things like that, how to communicate with them with some sense of clarity so that they grow. That’s the hardest part. The most rewarding part, though, is I think, when those same students who, you know, have been challenged in my class, come back and talk about how it has impacted them down the road. That’s the best part of it, you know, to get those quick emails, or the student comes back and says, you know, because of those challenges, now, things are really easy, or now I understand why you graded the way you did or what you were pushing me to try to do.
TL: Do you have any advice for students who might be unsure of what they want to do in the future?
DQ: Yeah, I would say college is a time of self-discovery, right? So after you get out of high school, I think that’s the time when you don’t really need to know what you want to do. The road is always a crooked one, so let things come to you because they will come to you. If you’re open to that, then you’ll figure out the pathway.
TL: Now we have a few lightning-round questions. If you could teach a subject other than English, what would it be?
DQ: Probably religious studies. Philosophy.
TL: Have you taught any Saint Francis teachers, and if so, who?
DQ: Yes, I taught Ms. Sherrard, I taught Ms. Friedsam; there’s a bunch of them and I won’t be able to get them all. Mr. Pasion, Ms. Joslyn, and I know there’s more.
TL: What’s your favorite piece of literature?
DQ: It would probably have to be either James Joyce or Joseph Conrad. I might go with Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Real challenging text.
TL: What’s your favorite TV show and movie?
DQ: My favorite movie—I’m a sucker for Rocky, but I would also have to lean into the ’80s and go with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which is one of the classics. TV show—I’d probably have to go with one of the cooking shows. I like to watch a lot of cooking shows. Alton Brown’s one of my favorites. His Good Eats show, it’s a real educational show; he talks about it from the science perspective, which is really cool. I learned a lot from him over the years.
TL: Last one. Do you have a favorite food?
DQ: My favorite food is Mexican food, hands down.
