English Teacher Plans to Travel the World
Alex Sibley was raised in Keller Tx, and has lived in Denton for the last five years. He went to college for four years at Dallas Baptist University, and then transferred to the University of North Texas for two years. Sibley will be married for four years in December, but does not yet have any children. He does however have a pitbull boxer mix that will not bite anybody!
Before going to school to be a teacher, Sibley was majoring in linguistics, the study of language, and planned to travel to Papua New Guinea and record languages that very few people speak in order to preserve them. “I originally wanted to major in Linguistics so that I could... go to remote parts of the world where there are languages with a small number of speakers so that I could work with them to record all that their language contains,” he said. However, after teaching english as a second language for one and a half years, he fell in love with teaching and changed his career plan. But just because he hasn’t gone to Papua New Guinea, doesn’t mean that he hasn’t gone to other countries. In fact, he’s been to Mexico, Sierra Leone, and West Africa on mission trips. At the moment, his favorite book is A long Way Gone, which is written by a man that was a child soldier in Sierra Leone. In the book the author tells his story and talks about how awful it was to be a child soldier. “It is a very emotionally challenging book especially since I have been there and have seen some of the damage that still exists because of the war there,” he said. Although teaching can be exhausting, Sibley is only concerned about the students and everything that they do, even if it’s not english related. “I hope to support as many extracurriculars as I can since I know my English class is only a small part of what they are doing and want to see them excel in every area that they are participating in,” he said. Sibley is also looking forward to seeing how his students progress this year. It’s safe to say that he is very interested in his student’s lives, and wants to see each one succeed. One of Sibley’s English III students Abby Wimmer said, “He makes english really cool,” and we all know that doing that is no easy task.
