By Tabitha Lee

How did a Spanish teacher who now has 21 years of bilingual teaching experience fall into a job he neither wanted nor expected?

Though Profe Todd was born and raised in Alaska, he moved to Colombia as a young man to go to university.

Todd said at that point he had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. However, he had a part time job doing translation work and tutoring work as well as teaching conversational classes for English.

One of his clients was a school administrator, and she offered Todd and a friend teaching jobs at El Colegio Abraham Lincoln in Bogotá, Colombia. Profe Todd was put with ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth graders, which were in his mind the worst grades to work with, especially for his first year of teaching.

However, to his surprise, his first years teaching high school were amazing.

“I was living abroad in Colombia as a college student and with a friend who was doing the same kind of work. We were offered teaching jobs … not knowing that’s what we really wanted to do, but it seemed like the logical next step even if it had never been our plan to become teachers,” said Todd.

Todd says he learned a ton about what being a good teacher meant. Since then, he’s only taught high school.

Todd taught in Colombia at El Colegio Abraham Lincoln for three years before moving back to the states to work in a non-profit based high school.

After teaching in the United States for the first time he returned to Colombia with his family to give his children a more immersive language learning experience, and began teaching every level of English class from beginner level one to advanced literature classes.

One thing that stays the same for Todd no matter the language or level is that he loves working with students.

“Working with young people. It’s an energy that you don’t see in other walks of life, not that I can talk because I’ve always worked in a high school-based environment, but for a reason, right? It’s something I never get tired of. It’s a stage of people that I can work with the best. I mean adults too, I love my co-workers, but I think it’s just a good space of an adult mind or the beginning of an adult mind. Tons of potential, tons of curiosity and the skills to do something with that.”