Mr. Hintz is one of the new staff members here at Horace Highschool, primarily teaching US History and its AP course. I had the pleasure of interviewing him to get to know him better.

First, we are going to start with his background. Mr. Hintz has 19 years of teaching experience, with his last nine years at Sheyenne. Mr. Hintz is a teacher with unique wisdom in helping build a school from the ground up, seeing as he was at Sheyenne since the beginning. When asked about building the culture here at Horace, he emphasized the opportunity and responsibility that the juniors have when defining the culture, “I think that is something that they should own and be proud of.”

When asked about some of the challenges of defining the established norms and traditions, Mr. Hintz focused on the vacuum of leadership that always exists when there is an absence of seniors, “Once a high school is in motion, and you got that routine and rhythm going, everything feeds off each other. You got seniors whom you hope are very good role models… when you have a new high school that starts with 9^th graders, then 9^th and 10^th graders, etc., you don’t always have that.” We then discussed the skills he wants to instill in his students. He highlighted the soft skills he tries to teach, mentioning time management, accountability, and organization, which he pushes as essential life skills.

As we were finishing up, I asked Mr. Hintz what one piece of advice he’d give to students, “It goes so fast, it really does is. I know a lot of people say it, but you got to take advantage of it; those four years go really fast. I think so often, students are counting the days until they are done with high school and moving on, and you know there are a lot of people who look back years later and realize those were some pretty good years. Learn as much as you can, but also experience as much as you can; you have some really unique opportunities in high school that you don’t really get anywhere else that allow you to really grow as a person.”