By Kira Lu ’20, Feature Editor

With the many teachers joining NA this year, we’ve decided to conduct a series of articles introducing some of these new members of the community. Here is the second interview in our series, a talk with Mr. Coe.

After travelling to the Physics Wing to meet Mr. Vallone, this week we spent a Tuesday afternoon in the Humanities Office. When it was announced that Mr. Coe had won the Constitution Day Teacher Contest sponsored by the Bill of Rights Institute (congrats, Mr. Coe!), tons of students turned their heads trying to figure out who he was. We were very excited when Mr. Coe agreed to do an interview with us, and we are so happy to have gotten to know such a wonderful addition to the Newark Academy Community.

This year, Mr. Coe is teaching Ancient World and American Experience.

Kira: What do you like about teaching the humanities?

Mr. Coe: I’m an American history person. I’ve always been obsessed with American history. I love the story. I’m a sociopolitical historian, and I like the idea of societal changes and politics, I’m just kind of a junkie when it comes to politics. And so when it comes to the idea of World Religions, I like to find the commonalities there. I love the comparative idea of religion and cultures and we get to do that in Ancient World. To kind of see how Hinduism feeds into Buddhism, and where they agree, where they disagree, why they disagree, and what it has to do with society. And when you talk about the monotheistic religions: What do Judaism and Christianity and Islam have to do with each other? How do they agree and how do they disagree? Why do they disagree? And the societal changes there. I just think it’s fascinating to see, especially with religion, and with government, that it’s not this kind of “preordained” thing, that they’re all very human creations, and that they have their faults, they have their foils, they have their things that we’re trying to work out. I love that it’s not set in stone! It’s not! It’s us, we’re coming up with it, we’re making it up as we go along. I love teaching the Declaration and the Constitution for those same reasons. That they’re man-made–that they’re less than three hundred years old! And that’s crazy, that’s so young in the grand expanse of time. So to get to work with that and interact with that is fascinating to me.

Justine: I really liked Ancient World. I feel like it’s one of those classes where you can really talk about what you learned in it.

Kira: Same, I still talk about stuff I learned in Ancient World now in my other classes.
Justine: Yeah, I didn’t know anything about any of those religions before I took that class and it’s pretty eye-opening.

Of course, we had to ask about his past life.

Justine: What were your favorite things to do in high school?

Mr. Coe: Favorite things to do in high school? I loved going to my high school football games. Every Saturday. All the high schools in our area played in the same exact stadium, so every game was kind of a home game even if it was an away game. So, always, always, always the football games. I did shows in high school–plays and musicals. I’m a big theater guy, still do shows. I loved doing that. I was president of the history club my junior and senior year. So that was very cool too. And I also went to a Jesuit high school, so we did a lot of stuff for like mission drives and service work, and so I went to the soup kitchen in Hoboken, I remember really being affected by that experience. I loved that kids at our school didn’t really leave; school was over around 2:30, and then people hung around until four, five, six sometimes, just cause teachers were around too, doing work, and there were so many clubs, and a lot of people stayed. It was also in Jersey City so it wasn’t like here where we kind of really have to head home, so a lot of Jersey City and Bayonne people hung around, and I would just hang out and talk with my teachers, even teachers I didn’t have. I remember befriending a chemistry teacher, and I was just like, “Hey! What’s going on!” and I would just walk in and talk to him all the time.

To get to know him more as a person, we had to ask a much more thoughtful, pressing question.

Kira: This is one of Justine’s questions but I think it’s really funny. If you could only eat one type of sandwich for the rest of your life, what would it be and why? I love this question.

Justine: Haha! What would you choose?

Kira: Mine would one hundred percent be grilled cheese.

Justine: Really?!

Kira: I love grilled cheese.

Justine: But there’s nothing else in it!

Kira: But it’s so good!

Justine: I don’t even know what I would choose.

Mr. Coe: I love chicken patty sandwiches. So maybe a crispy chicken sandwich but with cheese and mayo on there? Or maybe a little bit of bacon cheese mayo? That’s it. But if we’re counting burgers as sandwiches, then I’m a bacon cheese burger guy for life. Bacon cheese burger with barbeque sauce? Heaven.

Justine: That’s something to think about–if burgers are sandwiches.

We had a little discussion about what makes a food a sandwich or not and Mr. Coe tried to tell us that hot dogs are sandwiches because Ruth Bader Ginsburg said so. We’re not really convinced, but he definitely had some valid arguments!

After claiming that hot dogs are sandwiches, you would expect Mr. Coe to be a Gryffindor for saying something so bold and controversial.

Kira: What Harry Potter house are you?

Mr. Coe: Probably Hufflepuff. If I had to guess. Well, I just like the Hufflepuff logo the best. I do. I like the Slytherin colors the best. But I was a very big book kid so probably a Ravenclaw, if I’m thinking about it. But I just like the badger. I just like that it’s a Gryffin, it’s a snake, it’s a raven, and then a badger. Like of all the animals I would have expected that fourth one to be, it never would have been a badger. Objectively thinking about it, I’d probably end up in Ravenclaw. That would be my guess. Because Ravenclaw is intellect, and Hufflepuff is friendliness, bubbliness, so those two, neck and neck for me! I go back and forth, maybe Hufflepuff now. I don’t know– Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw. I’ll say Ravenclaw.

We then got a little sidetracked talking about badgers and beavers (because Justine sometimes confuses the two). Mr. Coe commented that badgers are “vicious, but adorable” and beavers are the best because they are a huge help to the environment with their dams. Finally, we decided to end the interview on an introspective note.

Justine: If you were a movie or TV show character, who would you be and why ?

Mr. Coe: I like to think I’m like Ron Swanson from Parks and Recreation. But I’m probably closest to Dorothy from The Golden Girls. You know The Golden Girls? I used to watch The Golden Girls with my grandmother, because my grandmother would babysit us when my parents were working, and Golden Girls was a show about four women in their seventies and eighties who lived in a house together they all paid rent on in Miami, and they still dated and did their thing and it was hysterical. Dorothy was kind of like the main character in it, and she was very sassy, and she was a teacher, and she wanted everything to be right for people, she was fighting for equal rights and all that stuff. And if I were a movie character, it would be this guy — Ray Stantz from Ghostbusters. Have you ever seen Ghostbusters, the original?

Justine: I did see it. It’s in my fashion show bio.

Mr. Coe: He’s one of the three lead guys. He’s played by Dan Aykroyd. And his ideas get away with him. So he’s like, “Oh, let’s just do this!” and he doesn’t stop and think, “This doesn’t make sense. We should probably not do this. We should think twice.” I get very emotional, I’ll talk about something like “Let’s go do this thing!” and then it’s like “How are we going to pay for it?” “Ahh, I didn’t think of that. That’s a good point. My emotions run ahead of the logic. But TV show, Ron Swanson or Dorothy, movie, Ray Stance. Final Answers. And I still can’t decide between Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff.

We appreciated getting to know him through our interview and we hope you will all learn something about Mr. Coe as well. Thank you to Mr. Coe for the reflective responses!