By Ava Scott
Scriptor
Wylie E Groves HS
1st Place
Division 3, News Writing
Personality Profile
Mozambique. The country with AK47s on their flag. Social studies teacher Shawn Morrison has made an unforgettable acquaintance with this country. Morrison and a friend were leaving Cape Town, South Africa, in his team owner’s car for Mozambique to help coach a provincial baseball team. They traveled through Durban, up into Swaziland, and, finally, to Mozambique.
While navigating toward the coast within the capital city of Maputo, they stopped and reversed, setting themselves up to go the correct way down a one-way road.
At that moment, police came out of the woods, got in the car, made them drive to a less populated area, and that’s when it all happened.
“I got held up by the police at gunpoint. They got in the backseat. I drove while they held AK47s at the back of my head,” Morrison said. Morrison was terrified. He was prepared though. “I knew that one of the problems Mozambique has with tourism is the police. They’re dodgy, dodgy police officers. I had money stashed away in my socks and other places, but just enough in my wallet, so if something happened, they’d think that that was all I had on me, so I was still okay,” Morrison said.
Morrison’s reflection on getting held up by Mozambique’s police doesn’t evoke terrifying memories. Instead, Morrison recognized why this behavior on the part of the cops occurs.
“[Mozambique]‘s a country where a lot of people are struggling, so the money that they got off of me probably fed those guys’ families for months, and it’s not that I’m justifying that type of behavior. Anytime you have problems of inequity, with ‘Haves’ with the ‘Have Nots,’ that generally kind of spurs on some crime,” Morrison said. “One of the things that negatively impacts the tourism of Mozambique is the fact that their police are a little corrupt.”
Morrison described how some people in Mozambique resort to crime in order to stay on their feet. According the most recent information from the CIA in 2009, 52% of the people in Mozambique lived below the poverty line and were among the 15 poorest countries in 2014 in regard to GNP per capita in the world according to the World Bank. He sympathized with those who sometimes resort to criminal behavior when their survival is on the line like the police he encountered.
“It’s easy for us from our area to step back and fault a lot of that behavior, but we’re not living under those circumstances where you can’t provide for your family. If we don’t have solutions to problems, we shouldn’t be pointing fingers until we can bring something to the table to that can help reduce problematic behavior,” Morrison sad. “It’s not that I’m condoning criminal behavior. I just want people to step back and analyze their opinions before they offer them. It is easy to judge people yet doing so doesn’t solve anything. I think a true conversation that needs to occur is how to prevent global inequity instead of rushing to judgment of others before focusing on how to solve the problem. Too much time is spent pointing out problems instead of figuring out solutions to problems. Our society needs to change in that regard.”
Stories such as his experience with the Mozambique police are an integral part of Morrison’s teaching style. To help his social studies students make connections from their lives to global issues, Morrison uses his personal
stories of travel.
“In teaching content for my class, we address things through the lens of perspective. Students need to be exposed to seeing things through various angles,” Morrison said.
Morrison had the opportunity of playing minor league baseball both domestically in Kansas City and Amarillo and internationally in Europe for a team in Mannheim, Germany; another in Canberra, Australia; and a third in Cape Town, South Africa. Because he was playing baseball overseas, Morrison was able experience more international adventures that he now uses as keys for
students to associate the information to.
“I make global connections in World History and US History and find ways to make the material of the past relevant,” Morrison said. “I think [traveling] just gave me a different perspective on a lot of things that the typical student here wouldn’t necessarily think.”
Many students tune in to Morrison’s stories because they are filled with not just global experiences but are sometimes tales of danger. While embarking on his first mountain climb in the Alps, Europe’s most known mountain range, a winded Morrison rounded a bend and encountered an 85 year old nun on the side of the mountain. Her strength and endurance to climb the mountain to the point he was currently at, despite her fragility from old age, inspired Morrison to push past and reach the top of the mountain.
“I felt like I was in Lord of the Rings,” Morrison said. “I was just walking summit to summit.”
He exchanged a friendly wave with a low flying glider pilot while he climbed from peak to peak. His map directed him from beautiful landscape to beautiful landscape while showing him a straight shot down. When Morrison reached his “straight shot down,” he had to sit on the back of his heels and go down jagged rocks. He’d have to grab rocks and sticks off to the side to stabilize himself down the steep incline. Maneuvering down the mountainside proved to be much more difficult than the map had led him to believe.
“I literally I sat down and cried for three minutes. I sat there and cried for three minutes. I thought I was going to die,” Morrison said.
By time he got home, it was dark, he couldn’t walk, and his legs were bludgeoned. That descent is what ended his vacation. He went straight back to Mannheim from Austria because he couldn’t walk.
“My body wasn’t working. It was the worst two hours of my life,” Morrison said.
Sophomore Ro Arambula will never forget Morrison’s story about his mountain climbing.
“One story that Mr. Morrison shared with my class was the time he went on a hike through some mountains. I don’t remember where these mountains were, but he described the side of the mountain that he was climbing down to be very weak rock that was very slippery. He told us how scared he was because he honestly thought he was going to die,” Arambula said. “Because Mr. Morrison is such a good speaker, I could visually see what he was seeing by how well he described the situation. I also got a sense of how scared he was by the amount of emotion he used in his story.”
Arambula and his classmates asked Morrison a barrage of questions when Morrison finished his story.
“After he shared this with us I remember the class asking many questions,” Arambula said. “We all wanted to know how long he was on the mountain side and if he had water and food and stuff like that.”
Morrison not only tells his stories with vivid details but with photos he projects from his trips: sunrises taken during hot air balloon rides, prehistoric-looking birds, his pre-popularized selfies, and photos of people from various
countries.
The people with whom Morrison crossed paths -either through playing international baseball or chance encounters–made lasting impacts on him. One man in Africa helped Morrison realize how important education for all is and how lucky students in America today are to be receiving such a high quality of education.
This man was a local writer, a poet, in Durban. Once the man found out that Morrison was American, he read Morrison one of his poems and asked him for help. The poem was about wishing that he was born in America–the land of opportunity. Morrison and the poet exchanged some emails, but lost touch because of the extra expense for him to send emails from Africa back to Morrison.
“There was no way to continue the communication with him, but I really wish there was something I could have done to help him get his stuff published,” Morrison said.
Though the man had minimal formal education, he was well spoken in a way that showed that he could have been brilliant. He should have been in a position to use his brilliance and afforded the opportunities that allowed his intelligence to be put to good use, use that could benefit society in a way that he was not able to have under the circumstances of his life. This man’s neglected intelligence was enlightening Morrison concerning educational opportunities.
“That’s one of the thing that really hit me about educational opportunity for all because this guy, if he was born in America, might have given us a cure for cancer,” Morrison said. “It makes you think so much differently when you have someone so intelligent unemployed, not contributing to society.”
While students here in Birmingham might complain that there is no air conditioning or that class is boring because currently lessons consist of mostly class discussions, students in other countries have larger problems such as lack of what’s considered to be basic education, antiquated materials, or overcrowded classes.
Social studies teacher Kenneth Uhde visited India and witnessed for the difference in the education.
“There was a ‘rich’ school, and you walked in and all over the building, there is construction. Literally, you have piles of concrete piled all over the floors,” Uhde said. “I’m just thinking if any of my kids saw this and thought about all the things they complain about here: ‘There’s no air conditioning.’ There’s 40 kids in a room there, they’re all at wooden desks, and their interactive lesson was that they got to talk to the teacher that day which is what we call boring.”
Regardless of the classroom situation whether it be fifteen person class here, a forty person class in India, or a grand lecture hall at an out of state university, a lecture–a prolonged story or otherwise–is meant to teach students, create curiosity, or stimulate the imagination. For Morrison, telling his personal travel stories does all of the above.
Sophomore Miranda Vordermark recalled some of Morrison’s stories from her freshmen year in World History with him.
“I remember wishing that I could relive his experiences because the way he described them made me so curious to what he was experiencing,” Vordermark said.
Besides inspiring students to see the world they’re learning about, Morrison’s stories offer relationship between the everyday world and the curriculum that can’t be made by pulling an article from the news, Internet, or paper.
“The fact that Mr. Morrison had traveled the world definitely helped the class because when we had a question about what we were learning he could answer it with an example of something he did,” Arambula said. “A
big part in learning about the world’s history is learning about the present day people. Morrison has met these people. By him experiencing this, he has a greater understanding of the world and its people and can share this with us.”
With stories of walking through Paris, running with bulls in Spain, meeting Italian soap opera stars, deliberately getting a scar from wild penguins, and tossing around deadly jellyfish, Morrison’s history students are exposed to places and cultures of the world through a first person perspective.
“I think as a social studies teacher my adventures allow me to make a lot of those real world connections,” Morrison said. “Whether they’re based on personal experience or not, [a current story or experience is] still a little bit more relevant to me.”
Morrison’s stories are tools for him to enhance content
comprehension and memorization of material, though some students, like Arambula, appreciate the stories beyond their purpose of connecting to class.
“I like how open and honest he was. It shows how much he cared for our learning and it made me trust him more,” Arambula said.
Morrison also shows his interest in students outside of the classroom too. Morrison participated in last year’s multicultural Communications Retreat through the Experiential Learning Center. On this retreat, Morrison had the opportunity to get to know some students, like current seniors Jazmyn Rivera and Eva Schmidt.
Rivera took notice of Morrison while he was sporting a lion winter hat.
“I wouldn’t expect an adult to have a lion hat. It caught me off guard, but automatically I thought “Hey, he’s a cool guy,” Rivera said. “I had a bear hat so he and I were matching with our animal hats.”
Rivera appreciated Morrison’s out-there animal winter gear. Schmidt appreciated that Morrison put forth the effort to get to know her despite not sharing her interests.
Schmidt and Morrison had to participate in a handshake activity part of introductions on the multicultural retreat. They were paired together and were asked to talk about themselves to each other. Though Morrison and Schmidt didn’t share a common interest–Schmidt enjoying art and Morrison loving baseball–they maintained conversation about both topics.
“We were talking about our interests, and I said how I like art. He asked, ‘Oh cool. Do you paint a lot?’ And he really started talking to me, and in my mind, I was like ‘Shawn, you’re a cool dude,’” Schmidt said.
Morrison’s interest with baseball that he told Schmidt about extends beyond just an interest. Morrison played international baseball in countries such as Germany, South Africa, and Australia. While playing baseball abroad, Morrison traveled even more extensively.
“When I was in Europe, I visited eleven countries, did a lot of the festivals, I did the Running of the Bulls, went to Auschwitz, and I went to four or five major Italian cities,” Morrison said. “I just kind of traveled around by myself for the most part which was really cool because I got to meet people and do whatever I wanted.”
One such solo adventure was in Paris.
When Morrison reached Paris, he was tired from his travel, so he checked into a hotel at two in the afternoon and took a nap.
“If I would have been with anyone, they would have been like ‘Dude, we’re in Paris. What do you want to sleep for?’’ Morrison said. “But because I had never been there and I wanted to enjoy it, I took a nap.”
Morrison woke up at eight o’clock at night and went down to Moulin Rouge. When he left it was around three or four in the morning and the subway was closed, so he decided to walk back to his hotel. His walk was quite long–from Moulin Rouge to right under the Arc de Triomphe where his hotel was located–but Morrison didn’t mind.
“At like five in the morning, nobody is out,” Morrison said. “It was just cool to see such a populated city, lit up by artificial lights and get to kind of enjoy it to myself, just kind of walk through it.”
Not only has Morrison enjoyed his time exploring European cities on his own, but he has also made memories with his friends–and the occasional stranger. In Australia, Morrison and a few friends followed a Scottish stranger–that they couldn’t understand due to his thick accent–through the Australian landscape to where attempting to turn back without the Scotsman own was hopeless. They passed DO NOT ENTER and DO NOT CROSS signs, passed electric wires unaware of where they were headed nor how to get back. Contemplating the legitimacy of their leader’s directions through restricted areas, Morrison and his friend trekked along until all of a sudden they were standing at the top of cliff overlooking a body of water that then fed into a waterfall. They were taking what could have been a potentially deadly swim had they gotten too close to where the water started to rush toward the edge. They were unaware of being in a scenic view for tourists.
“These people in the background were like paying five cents to look at the scenery through one of those tourist telescopes that you pay to look through, and we’re in the scenery,” Morrison said. “These people were all like, ‘Hey get your cameras out. There’s some American idiots.’”
While exploring the world on his own, Morrison didn’t fulfill the itch to travel; instead he made it worse.
“I think there’s a lot of people that make it to a certain level in something that’s time sensitive and it’s taken away from them, like people that end up in professional athletics. It’s hard when that’s gone. If a lot of you is defined by that, when it’s gone it’s almost worse than if it was never there,” Morrison said.
For Morrison, deciding to return home meant giving up a freedom.
“It’s almost bittersweet because I know I’ll never be able to experience that same free feeling ever again. It’s crazy, because most people probably never get to feel that way where they have complete freedom in every component of the word, and I did,” Morrison said. “I think that most people do get to feel it in retirement, and that’s much different. It’s a much different feeling of just hitting the streets at seven in the morning after not getting a hotel room and sleeping with all your belongings tied to yourself so that they’re not stolen.”
But sometimes, it’s time to pack up and head home.
In the summer of 2014, Morrison’s grandmother passed away. At the funeral and accompanying services, Morrison realized that the free feeling that came with all the traveling he had done came with a cost.
“When my cousins were speaking about my grandmother, it really hit me that I really knew her the least out of all of us, and that’s because I had lived down South as a teacher or I had lived overseas as a baseball player,” Morrison said. “During those several years that I had been out and about, living for myself, my family was continuing on at home.”
Morrison grew up in the area, attended Walled Lake Central for high school, and lived in Kalamazoo while attending Western Michigan. He maintained his relationship with his friends in the metro area while he traveled and lived abroad, one of which notified Morrison of a job opening here at Groves.
English teacher Holly Zimmerman’s husband, Dan Carruthers, is one of Morrison’s best friends from college. Their friendship had remained strong over the years even while Morrison was down in South Carolina.
Carruthers sent him a text that said, “Hey, send me your resume. There’s an opening at my wife’s school.”
Morrison was coming up that weekend for a wedding, so he planned to interview with the administration the Friday before the reception.
“It was really weird. I wasn’t looking outside of where I was at, but as soon as Carruthers texted me that, I put together my cover letter and resume and sent it over and knew that I was going to be in the area, so they looked over my stuff, felt I was qualified enough to have an interview, then I interviewed, and I got the job,” Morrison said, “Because I was not actively searching for a job in Michigan, my Michigan teaching certificate had lapsed. I was very fortunate that I had taken the time to get my National Board Certification because that allowed me to easily obtain certification here while working within such a short time frame in regard to the interview and beginning of the school year.”
Morrison threw his sports jackets, ties, and button ups into his Mustang, tried to find some people to stay in his house with all furniture and such in it, and moved back home to teach at Groves. He now teaches US and World History and starts teaching geography third trimester. Morrison’s move to Groves hasn’t deterred his daring spirit. During his travels, Morrison rode an ostrich, went shark cage diving, and repelled down the side of Table Mountain in South Africa; jumped off the Sky Tower–which is taller than the Eiffel Tower–and tubing through caverns in Auckland, New Zealand; and scuba dived and sky dived over the Great Barrier Reef in back-to-back days in Queensland, Australia. He also hopes to attend the Running of the Bulls this summer as a ten year anniversary of when we went in 2006.
Having traveled to so many different places, Morrison says that despite being frequently asked to choose he has trouble picking a favorite.
“Obviously I really enjoyed Europe because of the history. Barcelona is my favorite European city and as a whole, Italy is my favorite European country because all of the places I went were just so spectacular. Prague is probably my second favorite European city. Australia. Obviously Australia is amazing. The culture, the people, the sights… There is a reason why so many people have it at the top of their list as a place they most want to visit. New Zealand is an adrenaline junkies’ paradise,” Morrison said. “Taking all of this into account, I probably miss South Africa the most. I know it influenced me the most. All this being said, the world has so much to offer.”
Exploring the world before settling down and having a career allowed Morrison to learn more about his passion for history firsthand and gather stories to inspire his students. He emphasized how travel isn’t just for those who have retired from their jobs, and his students appreciate this.
“I like the idea that he went out and lived his life and then became a teacher. He wasn’t a person who settled down into his job and regretted it later,” Rivera said. “He was kind of just like ‘Alright. Let’s go have fun with life’ instead of wishing he had experienced the world more.”
While Morrison had his career in minor league baseball to help him see the world, Morrison encourages students to go out and see the world around them even if it means starting with a drive to Cincinnati.
“I was fortunate to have baseball to help me see it but everyone should make it a priority to travel. It really isn’t that difficult. It is amazing how many deals one can find on Groupon or elsewhere,” Morrison said. “Start small, take road trips with friends, but see the world. There is no education that compares
to firsthand experience.”