Mr. Frederick is an English teacher at Orchard Park High School. He can be found on the third floor, or at his farm wrestling with his donkeys. Frederick is a lover of the English language and is known for his encyclopedic vocabulary, his habit of leaving one hundred comments on any essay, and being (allegedly) Amish.
Q: How would you describe yourself in one sentence?
A: A cryptographer merrily deciphering life’s many puzzles.
Q: What did you eat for lunch today?
A: My usual, which is a small baggy of almonds– takes no time in the morning, keeps me going all day. It takes four minutes to eat and then I’m back to essays.
Q: What’s your motto?
A: I’m taking this from some group of French students in the 1960s: To live without dead time.
Q: What does being a teacher mean to you?
A: Convincing students that the English language is the one technology that they use more than their phone and that therefore the language is worthy of very, very close study.
Q: Who’s your teacher BFF?
A: Mrs. Downey and Mrs. Dole-waffner. Their dedication and grit and creativity are very inspiring.
Q: What’s the best book you’ve ever read?
A: The Castle by Franz Kafka because it anticipates the robots that are currently answering the phone across corporate America.
Q: What’s your favorite year you’ve ever taught?
A: I think I have to say 9 and 11 are perfectly tied. 9th graders are cute and adorable and charming, and 11th graders are seasoned and not yet in the grip of senioritis.
Q: Summer or winter?
A: I would like to break your binary and say fall.
Q: What’s your SubWay order?
A: Well, a tuna sub after first inspecting the tub of tuna to ensure the tuna isn’t too gooey, but a tuna sub with lots of black olives.
Q: What’s your favorite fast food chain?
A: They’re all pretty revolting, including SubWay.
Q: What person do you admire most?
A: In life, my wife, for her patience. In history, David Hume, for his relentless determination to think clearly and honestly own the conclusions that that led to.
Q: Any wisdom to share with the world?
A: Socrates’s wisdom, namely that what the wise person knows is that he knows almost nothing at all. Beware of thinking yourself wise.
Q: What are you still hoping to accomplish in life?
A: I’d like to write more. I find teaching English keeps me busy with all the essays and getting ready to teach and the rest of it, and I try to read but tend to really only write over the summer…In retirement I’d like to spend more time at a keyboard.
Q: What’s the best compliment you’ve ever received?
A: I feel you heard me.
Q: What’s something you wish you knew as a student?
A: That material is more relevant in the long run that it sometimes seems when you first encounter it.
Q: What are you most afraid of?
A: Oh, that’s easy. Ticks. I don’t like blood-borne diseases. I don’t like vampires. I don’t like spiders. Ticks combine all these.
Q: How do you want to die and at what age?
A: Eh, 311 for the age, and I want to stumble upon a German compound noun of such polysyllabic splendor that my frontal lobe explodes in a nanosecond, painlessly.
Q: If you were to die, what would you want to reincarnate as?
A: If I get a say, a red tailed hawk, because they’re majestic, and if I’m really allowed to micromanage my reincarnation, the red tailed hawk that lives in Delaware Park because that red tailed hawk watches Shakespeare.
Q: Why a donkey?
A: Gosh, there are so many good answers to that. Oversimplifying enormously, because of the ears. And they’ll wrestle with you.
Q: How do you feel about the Amish accusations?
A: Do you see a hat? Do you see a buggy?…I don’t go home in a carriage and hook up a plow to the donkey…I am 100% not Amish, although I certainly respect their way of life.
Q: What’s your favorite big word?
A: German’s better for crazy big words: “Autobahngeschwindigkeitsbegrenzungenschilderhersteller.” It’s a job title. It’s the person who makes speed limit signs for the expressway. If I find one longer than that, that would be my death moment at 311.
