Mr. T.J. Gillespie
NPHS- English Department

I started working at NPHS in September 2001, a pretty memorable time. So that makes, what? Twenty-seven years? Four? Somewhere in between? What year is it now?

North Penn High School is…
a nationally renowned, large, three-year, comprehensive public high school in southeastern Pennsylvania. If you want to know more, may I suggest the award-winning student publication The Knight Crier, a newspaper that is available on-line and as a convenient app for all mobile devices.

If I wasn’t teaching I would be…
loitering around public libraries and book stores trying to get strangers to write essays on negative capability in Keats’ odes. So, it’s a pretty good thing I found this gig. Of course I want to say that I’d be sipping café au lait at a Parisian bistro while working on my novel, but I think that is more of a romantic daydream. I’d like to think I’d be doing something creative and meaningful and, hopefully, that is what am I doing in the classroom.

When I’m driving around town I’m listening to…
I have something of a restless ear so I am constantly changing back and forth between sports talk radio, NPR news, and music. I especially like college rock of the ‘80s, British groups of the ‘90s, and other jangly guitar bands that have a good backbeat. And Taylor Swift. Doesn’t everybody love T.Swift? Or has the backlash started?

I could not possibly live without…
My Kindle and my library card. Although I am something of a Luddite (I don’t have a cell phone, I still listen to compact discs, I use paper maps when I drive), I love to read and the Kindle lets me download all my library books. I read more and faster than ever before, I save money and space. I ran out of bookshelves!

My hobby totally separate from NPHS is….
The truth is my biggest hobby is reading, but that’s pretty boring and not totally separate from what I do here at NPHS. I like to travel, eat delicious things, paint, write, draw, and compete in trivia competitions.

My guilty pleasure is…..
Processed meat and sugary sweets.

My proudest moment is….
Boy, I am glad you didn’t ask about my most embarrassing moment! To end on a sentimental note, I would say that my proudest moment is being a dad and watching my two daughters grow up to be kind, generous, optimistic, curious girls. In life, I think, the smaller moments are just as important—if not even more important—than the big ones.