Kilgore is not only a math teacher, but a man of many talents and hobbies. Mr. Kilgore is a student pilot and has an ultralight airplane in his home garage that he plans to fix.
“I haven’t done any pilot license lessons in about, probably about three years, just because of [being busy],” Kilgore said. “Aviation is one of my favorite hobbies to do, it’s a favorite passion of mine.”
But let’s go back a few years.
While he was at college getting his education degree, he also did piano private lessons and taught people how to play piano as well learned by his grandmother in third grade.
“I wish I was in a band when I was in college,” Kilgore said. Although he has played in band and jazz band in high school, Kilgore decided to focus more towards his education degree.
Before people only knew Kilgore as just a math teacher, he was a piano and back stage accompaniment for most of the music concerts before and played in the Footloose musical in pit orchestra.
“It was a lot of fun. Oh, a lot of fun. Playing in the pit orchestra is a blast,” Kilgore said. “I really miss the job. I loved it. I did. I love being at every single concert here. But I decided I’m gonna step back for a little while so I can spend time with my kids and I’m very happy about the decision.”
You can find him playing the piano for a band concert here.
Speaking of learning and education, Kilgore expressed that he genuinely enjoys learning things, such as German and painting.
“I just wanted to express my creativity for a little bit, so I just do some paintings, which are hung up in my room.” Kilgore said simply.
Now why German? German is one of the languages in Buffalo High School that usually isn’t picked by students, so why is a teacher interested in the language?
“I just spent the last, I don’t know, three years or so [learning german] just because I wanted to just learn something new,” Kilgore said. “My brother works for Mercedes Benz, which is a Mercedes company or a German company, so it works to his benefit to know German for his job, so when he decided to learn I’m like, well, I’ll just learn it with you again, just for fun. And so I’ve been doing just that, it’s really fun. So I spend some time every night, studying German or listening to German podcasts or German music.”
What about his home life? Are there any hobbies that come into play? Usually when you think about your home life, you think about relaxation, chores, or something related to outside of your interests. For Kilgore, it’s not only his family and chores, but also his farm. There was a morning where Kilgore showed an expression of exhaustion because of a wonderful birth to a baby sheep.
“This morning, at 2am, one of my sheep went into labor,” Kilgore said. “My wife woke me up and looked at the baby monitor we had set up for the sheep and I quickly changed to go to the sheep and the baby sheep was already halfway out.”
While Kilgore deeply loves and appreciates his job as a math teacher, his love for learning doesn’t stop there and he is always looking for ways to understand the world around a bit better.
