For this teacher feature, I sat down with a fan favorite of teachers at Tewksbury memorial high school, Mr. Francis Cusick, and asked him questions on all the topics that people have been dying to know about.

Question: “What Made you want to become a teacher?”

Cusick’s:“I always really liked coaching to be honest. When I was in high school I was coaching youth basketball and stuff like that. I actually coached, fun fact, Pat Connaughton, who is an NBA player for the Milwaukee Bucks… I always really enjoyed coaching. I really enjoyed history. It was my favorite subject growing up. I was not a big math and science guy, but I always really enjoyed history and english. So when I got to college, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do and it seemed like a pretty natural fit. I ended up going to Lesley university, which is a really good school for teaching.”

Question: “Do you like teaching?”

Cusick: “I do, I think it’s an interesting profession. Like any other profession, it has its days when you come in and everything’s going very well, and the kids are super engaged and you’re just having a real fun time. Then you have other days where nobody wants to do anything and it can just be a struggle, but I think there are more good days than bad. I do enjoy it. I like the challenge of it. The content especially that I’m teaching this year is a lot of fun.”

Question: “Are you willing to make an endorsement for anybody running in 2020 yet?”

Cusick “I think it’s too early. I really wish they didn’t have candidates start campaigning so long before the election. It seems like every year since I’ve started following it, back when I was in high school, the election cycle gets longer and longer and longer. Even though the presidential election is obviously really important, a lot of the local elections get glossed over in favor of the more celebrity politics of whoever is running for president.”

Question: “Will you ever run for public office?”

Cusick: “No, definitely not. I don’t think so. Although I will say that I think it’s great when people that are not career politicians get into it. People who have had real world experience. I do think there’s something to be said about someone who has done something different, who comes in and says ‘alright, I’m gonna do politics,’ whether it’s someone who worked as a teacher or someone who worked in the business world. That’s not really in my plans, not in the near future anyways…”