By Alexa D'Amato

  With retirement in his near future, history teacher Chris Fay is taking time to reflect on some highlights of his career.

  Fay originally chose to go to college for banking. It was at his job, just out of college, where he realized he wanted to become a teacher.

  “There was a young woman there, roughly my age, she was a teacher, and she worked in the summer there as an intern. I didn’t really like the business that I decided to go into, and it was based on those conversations with the intern that I began thinking about becoming a teacher,” he said. “I wanted to do something positive for other people with my life, which is why most, if not all, teachers want to be teachers.”

  While there’s not one specific memory Fay would call his favorite, there are a bunch of little moments that make teaching worth it.

  “This is going to sound sappy I think, but the best memory is of the students you enjoyed teaching. I can remember so many kids and what they looked like from my first year of teaching, it’s scary,” he said.

  Hearing from students who graduated reminds Fay of the impact he had. 

  “I just got an email from somebody who graduated last year and she brought up something we had been talking about in class because it came up in her college class and she just wanted to let me know. I think for a lot of teachers, that’s the fuel that they run on,” he said.

  Masco hired Fay and a group of other teachers at the same time, as many teachers were retiring. 

  “I came in with a group and we were kind of told to come in and try anything,” said Fay. “I think we were kind of given this charge as a group of young teachers to disrupt the norm in a good way, I guess.”

  One of the things that Fay and other history teachers tried out was the Family Biography writing assignment. Former history teacher Peter Delani talked to Fay about it in 1993, as a writing assignment that wasn’t based on textbook history, but on the students’ family history.

  Delani and Fay were both teaching freshmen when they started, and were part of a freshmen class team where Masco staples such as freshman orientation and peer leaders originated.

  Eventually, Fay went to teach the junior class when the modern United States history curriculum moved from the freshman class to the juniors. He also introduced and continues to teach the elective The 1960’s, and co-teaches a course with his wife, science department head Tammy Fay, called Prometheus Unleashed, which explores the impacts of scientific discoveries on history. He also advises the school's radio station, WBMT.

  “I think in the last few years I’ve gotten a little bit… grandfatherly… I would describe it. A little bit softer, because you do change. It’s more like ‘Ok, so you didn’t do it right the first time, so let’s do it again,’ rather than ‘You get an F,’ he said. “There’s a part of me that looks back on the teacher I was 10 or 12 years ago and kind of goes ‘Oh I wouldn’t do that now,’ and there’s probably parts of me that younger me would look at and go ‘Wow you’re really soft.’ ”

 Despite this understanding attitude Fay credits himself as currently having, he still expects his students to work carefully and thoughtfully. In fact, any student who had Fay for any class knows the one of the first things he hopes students remember from his class: how to properly do citations.

  Fay currently has plans to retire at the end of next school year. His impact on the Masco community, however, will be long lasting. From the record students now have of their family’s history, to the appreciation of the tunes of the 1960’s, to the ability to cite research that they completed in his class, Fay’s legacy will live on.