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WestraBIO
The Skinny...
Mister Westra is a thinker, self-styled humanitarian, and secondary school teacher in Omaha, Nebraska. He has taught social studies and religion, is endorsed in school administration, and has a particular interest in student leadership. His students think he is weird, but semi-cool.
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OFFICIAL VERSIONAccording to information obtained from the Iowa Bureau of Vital Statistics, Mister Westra was born at 3:55 one November afternoon in the latter half of the twentieth century, in a sleepy Iowa river town. The sixth of seven children, he migrated to the Cornhusker State with his family three years later, crossing the Great Plains in a blue passenger van during the dead of winter. Being of Northern European descent, young Mister Westra didn’t seem to mind the cold and snow. An apocryphal story has the toddler Mister Westra striding confidently outside to play in the snow wearing nothing but a pair of red rubber snow boots.
Settling into life in a small brick ranch house nestled in the Antelope Creek basin, little Mister Westra was the only one of his siblings not yet enrolled in school. As such, he enjoyed the privilege of accompanying Mom on trips to the mall, the bowling alley, and the cut-throat bridge games at the homes of neighbor ladies. Among his fondest memories from those early years are outings to the Gateway Gallery Mall – pushing the button to make the trains run in the display window at Youngstown toy store; chugging chocolate milkshakes with Mom at the Kresge’s Dinette lunch counter; digging into the big bin of inflated balloons with cardboard feet at Bishop Buffet after meeting Dad for a weekday lunch. Such shiftless idleness, however, was not to last. When he reached the age at which education becomes compulsory, Mister Westra was enrolled in Mrs. Hesse’s afternoon kindergarten class at the local parochial school. He advanced in wisdom and knowledge there for nine years, before commencing on to the big time of high school. But for the disgrace of having his own student council vice-president derail plans to crown himself Emperor of the Latin Club, Mister Westra enjoyed a relatively successful four-year stint as a band geek and general model student. He matriculated at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, during the height of the Cornhusker football team’s Tom Osborne dynasty. At the University, Mister Westra briefly dabbled in politics, waging write-in campaigns for the Committee for Fees Allocation and Homecoming King. He won the former race but lost the latter. Mister Westra earned a bachelor’s degree in the field of history. Since graduating from college, Mister Westra has busied himself with a variety of seemingly disparate pursuits. He got paid to play kickball with kids by the city’s parks and recreation department; he corralled oldsters as a volunteer director with a state-wide historical society; he was a youth substance abuse prevention specialist; he ran a co-ed freshman residence hall at a small Midwestern college; and he spent countless hours as a volunteer leader for a statewide youth leadership program. Contemplating a higher calling, he spent three years as a seminarian, studying to be a Catholic priest and pondering the ponderous. Much discernment led him from the seminary to a teacher education program, where he earned a master’s degree and teaching certificate. Proving his mettle as a masochist, Mister Westra taught sophomores for eleven years in a Catholic school in Omaha, Nebraska. He returned to graduate school in 2009 and completed requirements for certification as a school principal – thus enabling him to one day experience what he assumes will be the soul-crushing tedium of running a school. Mister Westra shifted gears in 2014, taking up the challenge of teaching at the middle school level. After four years of the Middle School Experience -- teaching social studies and theology -- Mister Westra recently returned to teaching high school theology. Mister Westra plans to die peacefully on his 100th birthday. |