Everyone thinks they know Mr. Maloles, the veteran English teacher at Emery High, but when I came to think about him more, I realized that I don’t think that many of us have thought to connect to him at a personal level that goes beyond his role as teacher and us as students, but instead to learn about him as a person.
I took the liberty to interview him with the help of a friend of mine to get a better understanding of not just who “Mr. Maloles” is, but who Paolo Maloles is.
Paolo Maloles is a first generation American in his family with roots in the Philippines, Maloles enlightened us about his early years and how it was a bit hard for him to make the adjustments necessary to fit it and be at home.. During lunch his peers wouldn’t want to swap food items with the young Paolo with some of his classmates going as far to make fun of him for his meals. And this struggle went both ways. Mr. Maloles explained how his family never thought to teach him their native language from the Philippines. When asked if he could change anything about his childhood, Maloles stated that he would’ve loved to be bilingual and to have learned Tagalog, the language of his root country. This inadvertently drew him towards reading and writing, which brought us to where we are today. Fast forward to his present self, Maloles confesses that if given the opportunity to change anything about himself today, he would change mostly how he thinks and lives in the sense of living more in the present, and to not dwell on the past and what can happen instead of what is happening. When asked about his hopes for the future he states that he hopes to live a happy, healthy, and long life. I asked him the question of “What would he say to all his students” to which he responded, “Be kind, Be tolerant, be patient with each other. I know it’s hard for students, as their brains are developing to kind of see the bigger picture, but the more one pays attention to kindness and empathy, the better off not only the person will be, but the world at large.”