Under the crisp moonlight, David Garbe sits at his desk, a pencil and notepad in hand. He sits attentively and listens to the tape recording of the mother of a murder victim. Yes, Garbe covers yet another story for Beacon News. From Beacon News to teaching junior English, Garbe switches his entire career.
Garbe started his journalism career during his senior year at West Aurora High School. According to Garbe, although it was not as structured as real journalism, he still has fond memories of the high school paper.
“We weren’t good journalists by any means,” Garbe said. “[It was] mostly opinions and a lot of fun stuff. There was a lot of creative writing, so it was not as structured.”
According to Garbe, when he attended Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, he gained interest for real news writing. There he also wrote for the newspaper and majored in journalism.
“I covered a girl in my class that was killed in a car accident just because she wasn’t wearing a seat belt,” Garbe said. “That was a good story. Obviously a sad story, but it’s a good story because it has teaching value.”
After college, Garbe went on to work for the Beacon News, a local newspaper in Aurora. According to Garbe, his part of the paper was focused on local tragic events such as fires, murders and car accidents.
“I worked on a story for two years where I was following this woman whose son was shot fatally in a gang shooting,” Garbe said. “Her family story was interesting. She had this long history of trouble, and she was a perfectly innocent person. She just lived in the wrong neighborhood.”
Yet, according to Garbe, at the end of seven years working in journalism he didn’t have as much love for it as he had began with. Garbe chose to quit his day job and traveled solo for a year in Africa and around the Middle East.
“Strangely, if you take enough time off of work, you appreciate work more because it’s nice to have a schedule, nice to have responsibilities,” Garbe said.
After returning to the U.S, Garbe decided that he wanted to switch his profession to teaching. Garbe enrolled himself into night school and took classes necessary to earn teaching credits to apply for a teacher’s position at South.
Lisa Richardson, a GBS English teacher, was one of the faculty members involved in Garbe’s interview process.
“He came with a unique and different background that brought something to the community that we don’t have much of,” Richardson said. “I think that his demeanor is really easy going and in that regard I think he was a really good fit for the junior studies course we were looking for.”
Garbe also provides individual help to the members of the Speech Team. Junior Riaz Gillani is one of the students Garbe coaches.
“He is very open-minded,” Gillani said. “He understands that you’re the one speaking and not him. He lets you make your own interpretation and he accepts it for whatever it is. […] He has the ability to not only go along with [your interpretation], but make it better.”
