By Maya Kostov

You know that feeling when you’re going through the motions of Tempe Prep and all of the work that you have to do and it feels like you’ve been at school for a month and a half but you look at the calendar and it’s only been two weeks and then you get sad? Well Mr. Calahan is the only teacher on campus to be a student at Tempe Prep and then return to teach. So, if anyone can understand your struggles, it’s him.

Mr. Calahan spent six years as a student at TPA, back when the school started at 7th grade. If you think Tempe Prep is a small school now, imagine it back then! His grade only had two sections of 20 students, but by Junior year, he only had enough classmates for one section. In fact, he didn’t even get to take Greek because there were not enough teachers.

Mr. Calahan went on to get his college degree in linguistics and cognitive science. After college, he decided to go teach English to children in Seoul, South Korea. But the visa paperwork was filed incorrectly and after months of waiting, Mr. Calahan joined the Tempe Prep faculty as the college counselor January 2010. Mr. Calahan says, “I started in Mrs. Moffitt’s role but if I said I did the same work as her I would be lying; she does everything for the students!”

For a year-and-a-half he worked as the counselor while teaching 1 to 2 Latin classes. Before these classes, Mr. Calahan had not opened a Latin book since his sophomore year of high school. After almost 2 years, Mr. Calahan decided he liked the classroom dynamic better than college counseling. Mrs. Moffitt was hired in the spring of 2011, and that’s actually when Naviance was set up to help sync everything together.

Looking back on his Tempe Prep career, Mr. Calahan would say that the biggest change on campus is the size and grade dynamic. According to him, each grade has less mixture of grades and middle school and high school are much less integrated than before.

As the years go by, Mr. Calahan notices various things on campus and offers this piece of advice to current and incoming Tempe Prep students: “Tempe Prep’s rigorous classes will do a lot of good for students who are willing to give it a chance. Many students hesitate when they can identify some weaknesses in a system. As someone who has gone through the curriculum and has worked here for a very long time, I would say that you get a lot more out of something if you give it a chance. Look at it and say, ‘Here’s an opportunity for me to learn,’ rather than shutting yourself out.”

Ultimately, the student body is lucky to have faculty such as Mr. Calahan who really care about the students and the education they are getting!