As you walk into room C105 of CHS9, you are greeted with a wall of handwritten letters from over the years, fluorescent blue LED lights lining the walls and CHS9 AP Human Geography teacher Kevin Pakarinen standing in the middle of the class, explaining how running shoes equates to interdependence.
For most of his life, Pakarinen never thought he would become a teacher, originally wanting to major in history. However, once he was studying history at Baylor University, he began to become disenchanted with the field.
“I was like ‘Hey, I like history a lot’ so I decided to go to college for history and I went down that path and I realized how much reading was involved and I didn’t know if I wanted that,” Pakarinen said.
After navigating through several career choices, he realized teaching is an optimal way to channel his love for social studies. He fell in love with the profession after taking an education course while completing his undergraduate degree.
“I tried to go down the journalism route and work at Vice and I realized I was not good at that either because I couldn’t grasp that type of writing style,” Pakarinen said. “I ended up taking an education class and I loved it purely because of how much Baylor cared about kids’ futures.”
In addition to conventional lectures and textbooks, Pakarinen enjoys teaching AP Human Geography through the lens of a student and their interests. Pakarinen also implements his own hobbies as an analogy for topics in AP Human Geography.
“I love running and running shoes, so I like to talk about my shoes a lot,” Pakarinen said. “So, when I talk about globalization and interdependence, I talk about how I’m interdependent on shoe suppliers to get my shoes.”
Pakarinen also includes students’ actions in his teaching style as well, believing his students can apply the concepts they are learning more seamlessly.
“I have a student in my sixth period who literally shifted his chair to his friend in the back of the class and I was like, ‘Student A is 10 seconds away from Student B in that relative location,” Pakarinen said.
Pakarinen aims to unite people through teaching social studies and garner a more profound knowledge on how history impacts everyone.
“I love social studies, and the mantra that I live by is that I’m trying to create positive impacts and change the world,” Pakarinen said. “It can get us to a deeper level of understanding of what we can do better as humans.”
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