By Gio Arteaga and Laura Lipcsei
As the school year comes to an end, Westmont sadly waves goodbye to an outstanding teacher who, despite his short time at Westmont, has made a huge impact around the school campus: Daniel Cullinan. Within Cullinan’s time here at Westmont, he has provided his students with an outlet to feel comfortable while still providing quality education through his engaging and interest-peaking methods. He is a positive presence on and off of Westmont’s campus, especially in the humble abode of room 22; a room where students are welcomed in with open arms. In his room, students are provided a quiet space to work on assignments while being able to have interesting conversations about life advice as well. Cullinan brings an energy to Westmont that is unique only to him: he feels that even if he is the teacher, students are the ones who have the power to achieve anything they can put their minds to. In his class, students set their own limits! Featured below is an exclusive interview with Cullinan.
What is your name?
“My name is Daniel Cullinan.”
How many years have you been teaching?
“I have been teaching for 17 years.”
How many subjects have you taught?
“I’ve only taught lower-level math like IM1, IM2, and IM3”
How many schools have you taught?
“I’ve taught at Wilcox for 1 year, Willow Glen for 15 years, and 2 years at Westmont. So 3 schools.”
How many classrooms have you taught in?
“I’ve taught in 4 different classrooms.”
How many students have you taught?
“I’ve taught around 2,800 students during my teaching career”
What is your favorite lesson/unit to teach?
“Trig has been my favorite unit to teach over my teaching career!”
How long have you been working at Westmont?
“Just 2 years at Westmont.”
How will you spend your retirement?
“I’ve got plans, I plan to travel around the world and shoot my age (golfing), I want to write a book, and I want to write 1,000 songs and play guitar!”
What is your favorite Westmont memory?
“There are a couple, my favorite memory has been the gracious embrace that I’ve had while being here by students and teachers alike.”
What will you miss about Westmont?
“Ohh I’ll miss the unique administration and especially the faculty. They are effective, professional, and they create a really positive and creative culture.”
What did students teach you?
“Some spanish lol. But really, the students helped reinforce what I’ve taught and it makes me happy. And they’ve taught me to always be truthful to yourself.”
How many meetings (staff/department) have you gone to?
“Hundreds of meetings, and it is my legal responsibility, I take it very seriously. I have one this afternoon.”
How many students have you taught, whose parents you also taught?
“None, I haven’t taught that much!”
How many students have you taught, whose grandparents you also taught?
“None.”
Do you have any former students who became colleagues?
“Not that I know of, but, quite frankly I base a lot of my personal techniques on a teacher from highschool that I revered. I use his techniques and his approach in many of the things I do. I don’t know if there is anyone who I taught who will recreate the things that I do.”
How many days have you missed?
“Surprisingly few! I had to be out of town, but I was never really sick. You can’t miss any days, it’s not right. Overall, probably around 20 days over my entire career. I have 112 accumulated days off, since I never used them. I can use them for my retirement. I’m not looking for a payment, they’ll just give me extra money each month.”
How many detentions have you given?
“Very few. All together, maybe 3 or 4. Referral strips, not really detentions.”
How many homework questions have you assigned?
“I assign 10 minutes of work, not exact questions. If I had to guess, probably around 250,000 questions.”
Why did you want to work in a setting with high school students?
“It’s a really simple answer, you can’t yell at a middle schooler, but you can yell at high school kids. You can be a bit angry at high school kids. It’s very rare that I have to use that option, but it’s nice to have.”
What’s the weirdest experience that you’ve had in school?
“My classroom got robbed. When I first started at Willow Glen, someone broke in and stole a bunch of stuff. On the flip side, one day some of the kids came through at Willow Glen and tagged everything, they wrote a big OG on my door. I was pissed, you tagged my door! But they said it was a good thing, it means Original Gangster. They went around messing with everything and complimented me.”
How many math units do you teach a year?
“That’s probably around 7 or 8 per level of math, so around 20 max in total.”
How many tests a year?
“In an entire 2 semesters, I will give probably around 10-15 quizzes, plus finals.”