Steve Kim

Hello! My name is Steve Kim and I am very excited about returning to the Write Alaska! Program. This is the second year that I have taken part in this program and can’t wait for the good times to begin. This year, I will be teaching Math Alaska! I have seen the itinerary and it looks like we are in for a great deal of fun.

I have been a math teacher at Clark Middle School for the past 5 years and taught math and social studies for half a year at Gruening Junior High prior to that. My original plan was to be a high school ESL teacher but I started teaching middle school and it has been hard for me to leave. I fell in love with teaching as a substitute teacher and decided that after 7 years of subbing, I should get my own classroom.

I was born in Seoul, Korea and soon after moved to Honolulu, Hawaii with my parents. My earliest memories are of living in Hawaii and being a baby beach bum. I loved it. When we moved to Anchorage, Alaska, I stepped off the plane in shorts and flip-flops to see snow for the first time. You can imagine my surprise and the huge change that my life undertook. To be perfectly honest, I learned to love the snow. My parents used to have to force me to come into the house because I loved playing in the snow so much. Now that I’m older, I don’t seem to care for the snow as much. It’s funny how that works.

My loves are family, skateboarding, art, music, and fixing and riding old bikes and motorcycles. I have a cat named Meow-Meow, two pit bulls named Sadie and Frankie, and a two-year old son named Maxfield. My cat hates the other three, my dogs can be a handful, and my son likes to think that he is a dinosaur. So, things are never dull around my house. Being a parent has proven to be one of the most exciting and fulfilling endeavors that I have ever taken on. It makes everyday an adventure. The only thing I miss is sleeping in. However, I wouldn’t trade my mornings with my energetic son for sleep. Plus, never sleeping in makes you really appreciate it when you can. Actually, it makes me feel like I’m being lazy. Maybe I will be able to bring my son on a couple of our day trips.

My favorite activities are skateboarding, making art, fixing broken things, and cooking. My favorite things to work on are bikes and motorcycles. I have three motorcycles, two of which run and one that has been giving me headaches for two summers now. I also have about 15 bikes in different states of working that litter my yard and take up valuable shed space. At the request of my wife, I have been weeding them out for sale. They are all older than my students because I like old things. I think that manufacturers used to put more care into the things that were built. As far as skateboarding goes, people always tell me that I’m old enough to know better but I just tell them that they don’t know anything about skateboarding. Sure, I’m much older than the median age for skaters, but I grew up skateboarding and you don’t just quit doing something that you love because you’re older than you used to be.