Interview with Robert Schenk:
A Gen-Zer's Perspective on Creativity and Career
This week I interview a 26-year-old high school English teacher with a great head on his shoulders: my cousin Robert Schenk. In our interview, Robert delves into how the pandemic may have uniquely affected those right out of college, isolating them during what is otherwise often one of the most social times of life. He also describes the thoughtful ways that he weaves creativity into his teaching career and finds time for his other creative outlets, from DJing to sci-fi writing. We come from a family of teachers, but his approach to teaching is all his own—and I wish for more of it in our world.
Q. What are your main creative outlets?
Sci-fi writing, radio DJing, and running. I also do a lot of drawing. And as a high school English teacher, I am constantly writing notes, trying to imprison my ideas so they don’t escape before my next class.
Q. Tell me about the sci-fi writing.
The sci-fi writing is actually related to trail running for me, which I have been getting into over the past few years. I have recently connected my interest in running with my interest in science fiction. I’m really concerned about access to water rights—I think that will be a huge issue in the next twenty years; it’s a source of major anxiety for me. I want to tell a story about fresh water disappearing, so we start using it as currency, and we also modify our bodies so they need less water. In that world, who would control that resource? What would a runner do, as someone who wanted to have autonomy over their body? They would need pure water, which would be hard to find. I’m building a story around that idea.
Q. Where are you at so far?
Right now, it’s a lot of brainstorming and world building. I’ve experimented with several different structures, and I have one that I kind of like. My goal this summer, during my break from teaching, is to write a complete draft.
Q. Where in your childhood did your creative drive come from?
That’s a good question. Probably mom and dad. Mom was always baking, creating something out of nothing. And dad’s screen-printing shop—he runs a small, independent screen-printing business in Colorado Springs—was like a workshop of creativity. You’ve seen it; it’s covered in album art and newspaper art and photos and reference materials and movies and books. He had a light table, and I remember tracing on his light table.
I also read a lot from a young age. Most of my memories from growing up are of me reading. And I got a lot of creative input from movies and television from a young age too.
Q. Were you always particularly interested in sci-fi?
I read a lot of fiction in general, but sci-fi has always been something that captured my imagination. The stuff I write is rarely based purely in reality.
Q. Why do you think that is?
My favorite books are ones that create a world that is both an escape from reality and a reflection on reality. They are able to reflect thoughts and concerns of world we live in through interesting prisms. Like Neuromancer by William Gibson, written immediately after Blade Runner. It’s pure sci-fi, so good and kind of hard to read because his world feels so abstract. But once you figure out the laws that exist in that world, you are able to enter into it as a reader, and understand it. It’s one of those books that was thought of as dystopian at the time, but now it just seems realistic. We really do have computers in our pockets all the time. Sci-fi like this can scare you, but it can also be a source of inspiration.
Q. Tell me about your DJing, your history with it and how you approach it.
This is my tenth year on air. It started with KRCC in Colorado Springs; I got on air when I was 16. Then in college at University of Oregon, I became the college radio station’s programming director and kept that job for four years. I’ve hosted a show on that station, KWVA, for eight years now. And I just started hosting a new one—a late-night reggae show on another Eugene radio station, KRVM. When I’m DJing, I have all these pieces, and I fit them together to create a picture of what I’m feeling. DJing is a pure reflection of my mood. With every show, I want to give you an idea of where I’m at and the story behind each song and the show as a whole.
In most things I do, I hear music in my head. When I think about the sci-fi story I’m writing, I think about the music that goes with it. I’m always listening, on the way to work, in the classroom, on my way home. In my class room, I have music on when the kids come in and when they have work time any longer than ten minutes.
Q. Is your creativity tapped when you are teaching?
You have to be creative to be a good teacher. It’s all about creating intrigue. As soon as you can intrigue a student, you are halfway there. Not everyone wants to learn 100% of the time, but everyone wants to have their curiosity piqued.
This is my first year teaching, and there’s still a lot I’m figuring out. I’m still learning the mechanics of how my school works. I need to know the rules first so I can learn when to bend them.
My master’s program talked a lot about this—about making “good trouble.” Almost everything we read in my program was published within the last two years. It had a huge focus on culturally responsive teaching and anti-racist pedagogy. The school system is old, and it’s broken. Our school systems were built for white middle-class students. When I’m teaching, I try and ask myself: How and when can I bend and even break these rules to help make schools more effective for people they weren’t built for? My master’s program had a huge emphasis on social justice, and I realize that not every teacher has this lens. But as teachers, I think we need to understand that our schools don’t work for all students. I need to understand how I fit into the system to be able to disrupt it and hopefully create positive change, and that’s where creativity can come in. I cannot be everything for my Black students—or for my Asian-American students, or my white students. But I can be creative, arm myself with resources, and meet my students halfway with compassion and empathy.
Q. Do you have examples from your first year of teaching where you have seen your approach pay off?
My ninth graders had to give me feedback about what they liked most and least about my class. And some of that feedback was that I saw them as people and not just students. One said, “I know that Mr. Rob sees me for where I’m at every day.”
Q. That’s beautiful.
I’m very grateful that I have students who feel comfortable enough to give me honest feedback, both positive and critical. It heals my heart; fills me up. If I can open students up that way, perhaps someone else down the line can teach them grammar!
Sometimes I think half of the work of teaching is healing students from their past experiences in school. I work with mostly poor students in Eugene—99% of our school gets free and reduced lunch. And it’s a great school; they try really hard there. It’s filled with veteran teachers who have stayed. They give and give, and it’s incredible to see.
Q. How did you decide to teach?
I’d been working in food service after college when the pandemic hit. I’d been hoping to work in radio after college, but I quickly found out that radio jobs were disappearing, and the only jobs were in commercial radio, which is pretty soul sucking. It’s driven by advertisers and all about top-40 charts, which is not the creative act of putting together music that I’m interested in.
So I’d been baking bread for Great Harvest, and I was so tired. I would go into work at 5 am, and I got two weeks off a year. It was brutal work. Good people, but hard. I was on a family vacation, and our aunt said to think about teaching. Around the same time, a friend I really trust said on a call, “You should think about teaching because you’d be good at it.” I found a program at University of Oregon, saw that I might qualify for scholarships, and decided to take a chance.
I got in and thought I’d try it, and then got super invested. When I got my job and started teaching, it was difficult, to say the least. But when I finished this first year, I thought, this is it—this is what I want to do. I’ve never laughed so hard in a job.
Q. You come from a family of teachers—aunts and uncles and grandparents. How did that affect your decision-making?
Oh, there was pressure there, 100%. But it’s also a big point of pride for me—that I’m a third-generation teacher. And our relatives taught so many different things. Math, English, home ec, fiber arts. I saw from them the positive sides of teaching: the fulfillment, the passion, the service, and also the lifestyle.
Sometimes I think about alternative paths. But I can always teach, and that is great. No one can take education away from you.
I think of teaching like a practice; like yoga, you practice every day. And there are good and bad days.
Q. How do you think about marriage and kids—if you do—and balancing those with your career and creative outlets.
My partner Sam and I do a lot of planning. We’ve been planning since our second year of dating. We are at four-and-a-half years together. We are planning on continuing our relationship because it’s going really well; she’s a great partner. I am open to the possibility of having children. But I worry about it for a couple reasons. I already have kids: 140 of them every day. And as my mentor Paul says, once you have kids, everything changes. Your emotional availability and your ability to be creative changes because you are now handling your own child at home. But I am open to it.
Because of the housing market and economy, Sam and I are planning five to ten years out. We are thinking about when we get married what that will look like; if we have kids what that will change; where both sets of parents are and whether they will need help. Sam is getting a graduate degree, and we’ll have a dual income eventually, but I won’t make a lot of money in teaching. If we want our life to be sustainable, it means lots of saving.
This past year has been about me prioritizing mental health and physical health. I’m working 55-hour weeks, not including assistant coaching for cross country. I give a lot to my students, and sometimes when I come home, I don’t have a lot left to give.
Q. What have you found most important for your mental health?
Running and getting outside. I work out six days a week. But also knowing when to give myself grace. I don’t have to be in the best mood all the time. Sometimes I come in to my classroom and say, “I’m not in the best mood today.” My students get it. Sometimes they tell me, “Mr. Rob, I’m having a hard day, don’t push me today,” and I don’t.
Q. When it comes to all this planning, would you say your peers are thinking similarly, or are you an outlier?
I think I’m relatively aligned. Most of my peers make a higher salary than me; they are in software development or startups. Their financial freedom affords them a different way of conceptualizing the future. They can work hard and play hard, but I need to prioritize my emotional health to be there for my students. My time costs different amounts than theirs sometimes.
But many of my friends are like me; they plan everything they do two weeks to a month in advance. It’s actually kind of irritating to me if someone invites me to do something same day.
However, I wonder if that’s a coping mechanism with the pandemic. Early 20s are the time when people should cut loose and have fun, but I spent my early 20s doing everything I could to hang onto my job and to stay sane during a global pandemic when I rarely saw any friends.
Q. I think you’re really hitting on something generational with the pandemic happening in your early 20s. Say more about that.
This is what me and my friends talk about. The planning, it’s more about a lack of control; trying to reassert control over our lives and futures after a few years of having very little say over what we could do, or even imagine what we could do.
It’s also about rising housing costs. It kind of feels like there’s a hammer coming for us. Housing is only going to get more expensive. And if you want kids, everything will get more expensive.
Q. For your unpaid creative outlets, how do you plan to prioritize them over time?
I DJ for myself, not for other people. It’s a way to process the world around me. I went professional for a short time, getting paid to DJ parties and weddings, but it took the joy out of it for me. For writing, I would love to be published someday, but overall, it’s also something I mainly do for me.
I guess I plan everything out so I have room for the creativity, because that’s where all the spontaneity in my life is. In the DJ booth, I have two hours a week to do whatever I want. I plan my life so much so I have room for the unplanned stuff. It’s like John Lennon says, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” I plan stuff so life can happen in the cracks.
It can be tempting to let life fill in all those spaces; but it’s important not to. It’s like designated playground spaces within cities. I read an article about how important it is to carve out that space. It’s the same way for my time. When I have two hours to be creative, I do so much. When I have so much time with nothing planned, I waste it.