On April 7 former Coppell High School French and Latin teacher Robert Cullen passed away from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or ALS.

Cullen was a much beloved teacher and was known to students and teachers alike as a beacon of positive energy on campus. Cullen spoke five languages in total and had visited many countries in Europe and around the world.

“I always learned something new when I was with him, you could give him any date in history, he could give you what happened on every continent,” French teacher Kimberly Moore said. “Historical facts, world leaders, political situations, an entire history lesson.”

Moore’s French classes often collaborated with Cullen’s French classes and each teacher spoke very highly of the other to their respective students.

“He had so much to add to everything, he lived in Japan, he lived in France, he spoke five languages, he brought all of those cultural experiences into what he did,” Moore said.

Cullen was eventually hospitalized and was staying in Oregon with his mother and brother at the time of his death.

“He is just the kind of person you really needed to take the time to get to know him better, if you did not you really missed someone amazing,” Moore said. “But I think his students knew him better than most adults, I think he felt more relaxed and more himself than when he was with his students,”

Known for dry sense of humor and funny jokes, Cullen was very humble in his extensive knowledge and often found himself sidetracked in class talking about history and telling some of his many personal stories.

“He taught with a passion that I’ve never seen in any other teacher, this was his life, he was up here all the time,” Spanish teacher Paul Sanford said. “He was definitely [at CHS] more than he was at home, he was here after hours sometimes til 7 p.m. or 8 p.m.”

Building strong relationships with students was one of the things Cullen was very good at. There was a personal touch in each of his lessons and there was never a time where he would refuse to give a student some of his extra time to help them in the class.

“I remember once I got a detention for being tardy, well, I got two detentions, but I walked into his class mad, he asked me to stay after class to ask me what was wrong, he seemed very genuinely concerned about me,” Makenna Hunt, a former student of Cullen’s, said.

No matter what students he was teaching, Cullen would always teach with a drive that is very special among teachers. Regardless of how fast the student learned or how much they liked the class, the same care was shown with every student.

“There was one time he tried telling a story of when his younger brother threw up on his Latin teacher’s desk, but he could not get through the story because he was laughing so hard, had to cover his face in the corner, he laughed for a solid five minutes,” Hunt said.  “The story was not even that funny, but it made him laugh.”

Earlier this school year, students in Moore’s French classes sent a large card filled with messages of goodwill to Cullen while he was in the hospital.

“There’s always that teacher, and for me, I have been out of high school for 20 years, I still remember that one teacher that stands out, I definitely say [Cullen] would be one of those teachers that stands out for most individuals,” Sanford said. “And he will definitely stand out for me, as a friend and as a colleague, forever.”

Many students at CHS did not have Cullen as a teacher but knew him nonetheless as he was never too busy to say hello to passers by in the halls.
“I went and visited him several times and we did not talk about [his illness], we talked a lot about Spain,” Sanford said. “He would really light up whenever he would talk about Spain, even in his time of illness he still preferred to talk about language and culture and his students, I honestly believe that was his passion no matter what.”