Animal love turned into teaching career

The animals in John Hughes’ classroom need a home.

Hughes, a science teacher at Laser School, retires in June from a 22-year teaching career in Kalispell Public Schools. When he goes, the chameleon-like anole and guppies who live in his classroom will need a new residence.

Hughes, 60, always has been unafraid of scaly creatures. As a child growing up in Dallas, he was the little boy squeamish mothers fear.

His love of animals knew no bounds, and while the family had conventional pets such as dogs and cats, young Hughes was notorious for bringing home more exotic animals.

He built a cage of sorts in a flower bed for the snapping turtle he had caught in a stream and worried his mother when the turtle escaped into the yard.

She was even less fond of the 7-foot Texas rat snake he brought home.

Other pets included fox kits, skunks, a coyote, lizards and more snakes.

As Hughes grew older, he decided his passion was cold-blooded critters, so after earning an undergraduate degree in biology, he started studying reptiles for graduate work.

Along the way, he discovered a new passion.

Necessity forced him to find a job teaching high school students while he was in grad school.

Hughes taught everything from freshman biology labs to zoology to botany to anatomy and was surprised at how much he enjoyed it.

He liked the constant challenge to learn new things, but the real joy of teaching, Hughes said, was working with students.

“The interaction with people is great, whether it’s little people or big people or in the middle,” he said.

Hughes stuck with his reptilian graduate studies, however, and took a summer job working at the Flathead Lake Biological Station in Yellow Bay.

He still remembers the day he arrived — June 7, 1981.

It was a crisp, clear day, and Hughes was blown away by the snow-crested Mission Mountains as he drove up from Missoula. When he topped the terminal moraine at Polson and could see across Flathead Lake, through Glacier National Park and into the Canadian Rockies, Hughes decided to leave Texas behind.

“I made up my mind I was going to stay in Montana. Come hook or crook, I was going to stay here,” he said.

Hughes’ summer job in the biological station stretched into fall and then into several years. But his work analyzing water samples wasn’t quite what he’d pictured for his life.

“I was in the lab all the time. It was not where I envisioned myself going,” he said.

So Hughes enrolled at the University of Montana to get his teaching certificate, and then completed his student teaching at Linderman School. After working for a couple years as a long-term substitute teacher, Hughes was offered a full-time contract and moved into a science room at Linderman.

The school has changed since 1988.

For nearly 20 years of Hughes’ career, it housed seventh-graders; then, in 2007, Linderman became the building that held Kalispell’s alternative high schools, Laser School and Bridge Academy.

Hughes has stayed in the same classroom through it all.

“This room is like a room in my house. I have a whole lot of ownership in it,” he said. “It’s going to be hard leaving, I’ve got so much of my own stuff in here.”

When Hughes retires, he also steps down as president of the Kalispell Education Association, the district teachers union. He has led the group for 10 years.

“He’s going to be sorely missed,” said Mike Thiel, who has been named Hughes’ successor as union president. “He has always been a champion of teachers and people who work as educators — not just teachers but [para-educators] and tutors as well.

“He’s always looking out for the little guy.”

Sometimes that hasn’t been easy, Hughes acknowledged. The nature of the system, with management — administrators and school board trustees — and teacher-employees creates a natural tension.

Budget constraints create more tension, he said.

“The conflict is money. It always has been, and it probably always will be,” Hughes said. “Until this state figures out how to fund education without putting it so much on the back of the local taxpayer, then there’s always going to be a problem.”

The tension happens when teachers and administrators disagree on how the budget should be spent.

But in the Kalispell district, the tension has largely been tempered with mutual respect and realization that all parties want the same thing, Hughes said.

“I think we’re kind of blessed in education in that we all have the same goal. That is to make sure the kids have the knowledge they need to be happy and successful in whatever career they choose to go into,” he said.

It’s the students Hughes will miss most when he retires. His role as union president took a lot of time, but he has still been a half-time teacher at Laser.

“I live it and I breathe it — and I like it,” Hughes said of teaching.

But retiring will give him a chance to return to a passion that predates teaching. A love for birds has replaced his old love for reptiles, but Hughes still is a fan of animals.

He and his wife, Kathy, plan to travel to wildlife refuges to see as many types of birds as they can. Hughes plans to be more active in the Flathead Audubon Society and do “conservation kinds of work” to protect habitat.

He may also volunteer at the county animal shelter and the food bank and “some of those things that make you feel like you’re contributing,” Hughes said.

“When I look back on it, that’s one of the things that appeals to me a lot about the teaching profession — trying to give back the same kind of thing someone gave to you.”

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.