Five Shocking Facts about CB Teachers

What do you know about your teachers? Maybe you know where they went to college and high school or their favorite sports teams or how many kids they have.

But what do you really know?

All teachers here at CB have things that students don’t know and things that students just simply can’t believe. Here are five SHOCKING facts about CB teachers that will leave you as speechless as Jesuit students when CB wins Holy Bowl.  

1. Mr. Bernie Eckel is also known as the “Turd Chaser.”

Our renowned Physics teacher has had an interesting past. In class, he often spends more time telling life stories than teaching physics, so honestly whatever comes out of his mouth doesn’t surprise me. Mr. Eckel says, “for my old job, I was in charge of the sewage system. [The waste I dealt with] was knocking people out and people were running, but not me. I was jumping up and down in that stuff.”  His enthusiasm for such an obscure job dubbed Mr. Eckel the Turd Chaser. 

2. Mrs. Kelly Safford, our CB environmental activist, used to work for an oil company. 

Whenever there’s a new environmental initiative on campus, I always know Mrs. Safford helped with it. So when she shyly admitted that she used to work for an oil company, my jaw dropped and I was speechless. Mrs. Safford is not proud of this past and wants everyone to know she only had this job out of necessity and due to her college degree in geology. “I [worked for them] as a geologist,” she says. “It was right after college — you take whatever job that you get offered.”

3. Mrs. Amanda Perkins, or Miss Mandy, doesn’t cook at all.

My mom keeps nagging me and trying to teach me to cook before I leave for college because apparently it’s a “life necessity.” But Miss Mandy doesn’t cook and she’s fine. “Even when my kids were little, I didn’t cook at all. Truly, I would just go to the store like everyday and get something. I hate cooking, and I also don’t have the patience for it,” she says. This is giving me hope that I can survive without learning how to cook because I also have very little patience for it.

4. Mrs. Emily McDougall has lived ALL over.

The most moving I’ve ever done was from one part of Carmichael to another when I was two, so when people have lived in several places, I always find it fascinating. Which is why I think Mrs. McDougall’s past piqued my interest. “I lived in Alaska for awhile, I lived in Boston for awhile. And I’ve lived in many different parts of California, so I went to seven schools before high school.” In Alaska she saw the aurora borealis once, and she went to high school with NBA star Jason Kidd. So what I learned from Mrs. McDougall is that living in different places leads to super neat life experiences and stories that people wouldn’t know.

5. Dr. Bill Iliff is a HUGE baseball fan.

Of course this isn’t that surprising — thousands of people love baseball. But how many baseball fans have been to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Not a lot of fans make their way to the hall of fame for any sport, but Dr. Iliff has been to the baseball hall of fame, not once or twice like any other fan, but he has been four times. Dr. Iliff loves what they have at the museum, like the exhibit of old timey radio announcers.