David Rubino

David Rubino teaches Japanese II and Japanese II Honors. Before becoming a teacher at the high school, he tutored students learning for 10 years and later taught elementary school English in Japan. His favorite ice cream flavors are mint chocolate chip and ginger. In his free time he likes reading, hiking and playing video games.

Tell me a little bit about where you’re from and where you grew up.
I grew up on Long Island, New York. As soon as I could, I moved to the Hudson Valley area to attend the State University of New York at New Paltz. Then, for graduate school I went to the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

What made you want to become a language teacher?
Originally I wanted to be an artist, but I sometimes had a hard time focusing on deadlines. During that time, I started tutoring at a Japanese university. One student of mine had ADHD. We worked together for a while and he was having difficulty with grammar, but we worked on it, and finally, everything clicked into place and he was so excited to finally have that down.

What made you want to come to the high school?
Over the summer I was applying to different programs. I had just come back from Japan and I was looking for work teaching Japanese, when the high school came across my radar. I had my first interview, and I could tell from the interview that they all had so much love for their school and I fell in love with that energy. The high school went from a place where I was just doing an interview to my, ‘I have to get here’ option.

What is usually your favorite thing to do during the summer?
Road trips. It’s nice to see different places and experience different things. When I was in Japan, a couple friends and I toured Shikoku. It’s one of the smaller of the four major islands in Japan. I loved the beautiful scenery and, because it’s rural, you see a side of Japan that you don’t get from big cities.