Riiiiing.
Kory Kaspar dials his mom’s phone number as he waits outside his marketing class at Stephen F. Austin State University.
“Mom, I know you’re probably going to be frustrated, but I’m going to change my major and I’m going to be a history major,” he said.
“Well, what are you going to do with that?” she questioned immediately.
“I guess I’m going to be a teacher,” he said.
“You sure this is what you want to do?” she said.
A deafening silence filled the room.
“Yes ma’am, I think it is,” he replied.
This is what his future would be.
Kaspar’s story started in Freeport, Texas, where he was always surrounded by teachers. His dad was a social studies teacher and coach and his mom was a marketing teacher.
Unlike science and math, history always felt natural. In high school, he got by, getting A’s in base level classes. He was thinking of minoring in history.
He had everything set for college.
Everything besides money.
“I wanted to make money, so I went and I was fourth in my class. I was smart. I was capable,” Kaspar said. “My dream was always to go to [the University of Texas at Austin], but my family couldn’t afford it, so I ended up at Stephen F. Austin University.”
His goal: get a degree, join the Reddy Ice Bag Company, where his uncle is a CEO and work his way up.
He. Hated. It.
His life sucked.
He was stuck in an endless loop of statistics, data and numbers.
“I felt this pull, something inside me,” Kaspar said. “I’m a religious person, so God was telling me to stop fighting. Do what I’m telling you you’re good at and what you are interested in.”
The final straw was when Kaspar bombed a test in his statistics class.
He put the test down.
And walked out.
In that moment, he saw his life before him. Statistics was not made for him, but history was.
Immersing himself in history was a dream. Taking classes such as Latin American history and Russian history, he felt everything was at his disposal.
His first job was as a basketball coach and world geography teacher at Cypress Woods High School, northwest of Houston.
“It was massive,” Kaspar said. “3,000-plus kids, a city I had never known. I’m not from Houston, so there’s restaurants everywhere, there’s apartment buildings everywhere, there’s everything everywhere, traffic. I wasn’t accustomed to that.”
He aspired to be head coach of the basketball team and teach world history. Instead, he taught world geography and never wanted to do it again.
So he applied to different jobs: teaching world history at various high schools in the Houston area, such as Kingwood Park High School and United States history at others.
He stayed with U.S. history.
Even though he did not know much about that part of history, he fell in love with it.
Now, Kaspar works here, at Coppell High School, since his wife got a job at Children’s Health Dallas. Quickly assimilating into the school as an AP U.S. History teacher, it seems that he has been here for years. He has energy and love for his job.
“He really has the initiative to work hard and we are seeing that in our team planning times when he actually puts forth good ideas to help develop engaging lessons,” U.S. history teacher Joshua Chanin said. “He knows the content well, he enjoys his job and he’s working well with the team.”
Kaspar created connections forming a second family in his job. His goal: give AP students the opportunity to distance themselves from the normalities of treating assignments like a job rather than social interactions.
“He jokes with his students and that’s always fun when the teacher does that with you, because some teachers who don’t do that aren’t liked nearly as much,” junior Alivia Shang said. “Coach Kaspar presents it in a very exciting way.”
After a long journey and one spontaneous decision that changed his life, Coach Kaspar has found his way to Coppell.
A new arrival.
A new story.
A new home.
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