JUPITER CHRISTIAN SCHOOL – Have you ever wondered what made your favorite teachers decide to teach? I have. Questions about our teachers’ lives before they began teaching have circled in my mind for a while now, and today, I finally got a chance to answer some of them.
Mr. Wolz, one of our High School Bible teachers, was kind enough to answer a few questions about his pre-teaching life. A fan-favorite since he arrived at JCS midway through the 2020-21 school year, he has made Bible classes fun and engaging for all students. Because he is an amazing teacher, it may come as a surprise that teaching was not his initial plan. During our interview, he admitted that he originally applied to Palm Beach Atlantic University (PBA) with the intent of pursuing a pastoral route, but discovered his calling in teaching a few years later.
When asked what made him apply to PBA, he shared that he heard about it from his older sister and decided to apply because of its strong Bible program. Mr. Wolz’s undergraduate degree is in Biblical and Theological Studies while his Master’s is in Divinity. He chose to remain at PBA for his Master’s program because of their accelerated curriculum, which allowed him to finish what is normally seven years of school in six years.
Another surprise for students who know Mr. Wolz may be the fact that he initially pursued options for a PhD with schools like Oxford and Cambridge. This plan did not come to fruition, however, because of COVID. Due to the uncertainty brought about by the pandemic, schools like these drastically cut funding for PhD programs, forcing Mr. Wolz to put the plan on hold. Being forced to wait on his PhD led Mr. Wolz to apply to JCS after getting board of his cats post-graduation.
“I initially thought it would be a one to two year thing,” he admitted, but clearly he has stuck around. Mr. Wolz’s position within the JCS family has been further cemented with the arrival of his son, Levi. The Wolz’s are content with their current life, Mr. Wolz shared, though he hasn’t entirely given up on the dream of earning his PhD so that he can teach in either a University or Seminary.
When I inquired about how being a new parent affects his teaching, Mr Wolz replied that it is tough. “Levi is just who I’d rather be spending time with,” he told me, adding that he means no offense to his students. Students who have had him before Levi and then again after Levi know that his grading speed has gone down, a fact that Mr Wolz is not shy about admitting. When he first arrived, students could anticipate knowing their Bible grades within twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Now however, it takes a little bit longer.
To close out our interview, I asked which subject is his favorite to teach. After a moment or two of thinking, he responded that it is helping students understand the well-known Bible stories that sometimes get glossed over. He especially likes the moments where students make connections or observations in the story that they otherwise would not have made. That was also one of my favorite parts of being his student.
