In an alternate universe, our beloved art teacher, Dale Homolka, would be an engineer. Few know that Homolka actually started off by attending Mankato University, which is now Minnesota University, majoring in engineering. However, during his senior, year he took a ceramics class and decided then that he just didn’t want to be an engineer.
After making the move to Jacksonville with his wife, he chose to go back to school, attending Illinois College to obtain his painting degree. He eventually attended art taught by none other than Mrs. Mallory-Welch who now teaches art at Turner Junior High. This class inspired him to teach art as he says that Mallory-Welch “made the class seem exciting, interesting, and overall fun to be there.” Homolka’s favorite teacher while in school was his English teacher, Mrs. Everet, because he said she made literature seem interesting.
Homolka says that he likes being a teacher at the high school because he has a better opportunity to teach all classes as opposed to teaching a college class where he would only get to teach one type of art class. He says that his favorite type of art class to teach is pottery or ceramics; however, he also likes teaching painting and photography. On the other hand, Homolka says that he thinks all types of art classes are important to learn, yet he isn’t the biggest fan of water colors. He also says that water colors are more of a technique instead of an actual class.
One way to make Homolka really mad is by doing his ultimate pet peeve which is lying to him. He first began his journey at Jacksonville High School as a student teacher assigned to assist Mrs. Dunseth in her classes. A favorite moment of Homolka’s from his recent years at JHS is when he and another teacher mixed the sculpting and molding classes together to build mobiles.
During the long voyage of choosing a job, everyone has to make sure that they choose the right kind of work to be a part of, and Homolka is a great example of that. When asked what he would be doing if he were not teaching art, he merely replied by saying that he had never even thought about doing something else.