Profile by rayna mahnken

If adventure had a name, it would be...

KEVIN HEIKEN. ou’re walking in the woods.

You’re not alone: you’re hiking with the Heikens, two brothers who have decided to take a stroll behind the fence of their backyard. Their names are Kevin and Korey. You know them because they’re always doing stuff like this. You’ve heard the stories of Kevin’s shark taco tradition, the Star Wars class he teaches at UC Berkeley, the fishing and kayaking trips, the pet Crocodile his uncle brought over from Mexico (albeit illegally), and the scorpion breeding side job.

You can’t say as much about his brother, although you know he wrangles rattlesnakes for a living. These young men are like myths, Indiana Jones in the flesh. (You heard that Kevin actually tried to become an archaeologist once, because becoming a real-life Indiana Jones was a dream of his. As you recall, it didn’t work out.)

You’re following them about 30 feet back, enjoying the faint rustling of green leaves and smell of damp soil as you hike the forest path. After a little while, you get the

feeling something is wrong.

The birds have stopped singing in the trees, which is a sure sign of oncoming trouble. Sure enough, even as you begin to call a warning to the two brothers, men decked out in military armor and wielding AK-47’s burst out of the undergrowth. They’re screaming, “GET DOWN!! On the ground, NOW!” You run, adrenaline flashing through your blood.

As you glance back, your heart in your throat, you see the Heikens are being thrown into the back of a sleek black hummer that had not been there before. You feel your stomach freeze over. Is this the end of Kevin Heiken, explorer, adventurer, and teacher?

As it happens, no! It’s just another of his many, many stories that he shares with anyone willing to listen. Kevin, after all, is a history teacher at Mountain View High School in California. Stories are his specialty: stories of the past, stories about him, current stories going on today. He is an adventurer, a friend, and by far

one of the most beloved teachers on campus.

In the government abduction tale, you were not, in fact, there. Kevin and his brother were, however, and were interrogated for hours before being released due to a misunderstanding. Kevin wasn’t there to infiltrate the government- he was just out for a pleasant afternoon stroll.

This story is one of many that Kevin shares in his classes daily. They’re a personal addition to his curriculum, one of the many reasons students hold him close to their hearts.

Throughout the year you really feel like you can get to know who this Kevin guy is, as opposed to the dry, typical teachers whom you don’t know anything about. In fact, usually you know more about your teacher’s dog than you do about them. The really special thing about Kevin, though, is that he tries hard to get to know you as well. His girlfriend and fellow teacher, Carson Rosenberg, said, “He really prioritizes the individual student.

The lesson is important, but he just really thinks about each of his students as individuals and knows more about them and prioritizes them.”

As I walk up to his classroom I swiftly dodge the crowd of sweaty students that have flooded the hall with the ring of the bell. My stomach feels heavy from a sub-par school lunch, but it grows warm as I hear Kevin’s voice 2 echo down the hall. “Good

afternoon, Miss Melanie. How are you? Good, glad to hear that! Afternoon, Mr. Butters, welcome, welcome.” I turn the corner, just in time to see “Mr. Butters” and Kevin exchange a peace sign. Kevin is stationed outside his c l a s s room door, personever y ally welcoming student in this fashion.

In his warm yellow classroom, students joke and laugh amongst themselves as they grab their school laptops. The walls are lined with haphazard pieces of paper, gifts from students. I observe one, a graphite drawing of Kevin, his most notable feature his “steel wool” beard. Another next to it is an Indiana Jones movie poster, photoshopped to have Kevin as the star. Another sign next to that one boldly states, “MR. HEIKEN IS A LYCAN!” The beard would fit, then, I decide. I take a seat as Kevin strolls inside bellowing a loud ‘Good afternoon!’ that everyone echoes enthusiastically. As the hour wears on, he teaches in a way to dispel bias and open people’s eyes to the world; he treats students as fellow peer adventurers and respects them as adults.

Beyond the curriculum, the class talks about current world issues, stories, and opinions of events both historical and modern. His teaching style is very different from the average teacher, and his willingness to make things personal and important impact others far beyond this yellow, heartwarming room.

When describing Kevin with

only a few words, those close to him say Kevin is selfless, empathetic, humble, adventurous, determined, and loyal; but in an interview with him I discovered he hadn’t always been this way. “I, as a young person, was not a particularly open minded person for the majority of my high school life,” Kevin says.

I grew up in a school where students didn’t really interact with each other. If you were on what was seen to be the ‘top ac- ademic

track’ y o u had special privileges. ... I was fortunate in my own way to be a part of that, but it definitely did not make me a very good person. When I went off to college that was when I realized how little I knew, and in a lot of ways had my moment of self discovery when I saw how small I was in the world (Heiken).

Kevin went on to tell me how this smallness encourages all his adventures, and inspires him to be a lifelong learner.

That acknowledgement of smallness brings upon a yearning to at least explore what you can, because the world is so big, and there’s so much out there. Those memories really stick with you. I’ve definitely found that in terms of memories, I’ve felt far more lasting happiness and more of a significant keepsake from seeing a bunch of strange pastel lizards darting through the cloud forest in Martineke than I’ve ever felt when I have purchased an iPhone or something (Heiken).

Adventures Kevin has embarked on since this moment include hiking across Europe, kayaking in tropical islands to find endangered blue iguanas, digging at archaeological sites and labelling ancient artifacts from Greece and Rome, catching and eating leopard sharks for the fourth of July until one almost killed him, almost getting caught in a forest fire while backpacking, teaching Star Wars and History of Middle Earth classes at UC Berkeley, breeding scorpions for zoos as a side job, teaching tennis to the Housewives of Orange County and almost getting dragged on the show, and surfing 12-foot waves and living to tell the tale Yet, perhaps the hardest one of all of them is teaching history to young people and trying to make them like it.

Kevin has been a learner all his life, sprouting from an intense curiosity of the world ever since he was young. He grew up in San Clemente, and worked to balance his fun-loving take on life with an academic drive. His sister, Kelsey Heiken, told m e a little about his behavior as a child: “He loved dinosaurs so much he could repeat any facts about anything to do with those. Same with reptiles, World War II, history. He’s so bright.” He was certain of where his future would take him, looking forward to getting his Ph.D. in history and becoming an archaeologist.

However, when Kevin went into college the “moment of clarity” struck:

he no longer knew who he wanted to be. His tone is quiet and solemn as he confides, “I think there’s very few more haunting places to be than the place where you don’t have any idea what your purpose is. A feeling of purposelessness is as about as deeply alienating a feeling that you could possibly feel” (Heiken).

As horrid as the feeling is, one wouldn’t think initially that it was common.

Unfortunately, a lack of purpose is quite common in the recesses of the modern student body. Kevin Zhou, writer for The Christian Science Monitor, wrote the following: As a high school senior, I have witnessed the hysteria surrounding college applications. With colleges demanding higher and higher standards for each successive class of incoming freshmen, teenagers are forced to stay up until the wee hours of the morning… When they’re not [working on schoolwork], high schoolers are packing the few remaining hours of their schedules with ... any other activity they believe to be enticing to the selection committee.

With very little free time, the taxation of the student mind leaves them burnt out and vulnerable to negative feelings. It’s easy to feel pointless when you’re so invested in a future that is unknown, especially when you don’t know what exactly you hope your future will look like.

It is a teacher’s role not only to instruct students in the assigned curriculum, but to watch after their students’ health. This is a part of the job that it seems most teachers shirk, or ignore altogether. In an interview by Josh Dehaas with psychologist and college professor Gordon Flett on mental health, titled “The Perils of Perfection”, Flett explains: Something like six out of 10 students said that at some time during the school year they experienced a debilitating attack of anxiety. I think four in 10 had depression. And that’s the internalizing problems.

Then you’ve got the ... anger issues, substance-abuse issues and intentional self-harm. … The vast majority of students who need help don’t seek it, and are carrying around this false front where they let on that everything is fine when they’re not.

I’m concerned about the student who’s burned out, or overextended.

Daniel Gilbert, psychologist and Harvard professor, expresses a similar sentiment in his book Stumbling on Happiness: Mattering makes us happy. The act of steering one’s boat down the river of time is a source of pleasure, regardless of one’s port of call. … We insist on steering our boats because we think we have a pretty good idea of where we should go, but the truth is that much of our steering is in vain - not because the boat won’t respond, and not because we can’t find our destination, but 3

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because the future is fundamentally different than it appears through the periscope.

(23) That shirked, unspoken responsibil- ity that teachers have to watch and care for their students is slowly disappearing in a wor l d where it’s needed more and more.

In times like this, people like Kevin can make a major difference in the stressed teen’s life.

After taking a step back and focusing on the small things in his life, from changing his major to getting a small job and exploring different paths, Kevin eventually figured out that he wanted to be a teacher of history and apply his lifelong curiosity to better young people. He hopes to help teach individuals things beyond the classroom, to show them things he didn’t 4 know and teach things

that people don’t often teach. Kevin aims to guide students to discover a life path, to learn what Gilbert describes in Stumbling on Happiness: The question of the purpose of human life has been raised countless times; it has never yet received a satisfactory answer and perhaps does not admit of one…. We will therefore turn to the less ambitious question of what men show by their behavior to be the purpose and intention of their lives. What do they demand of life and wish to achieve in it? The answer to this can hardly be in doubt. They strive after h ap p i ness; they want to become happy and to remain so. (34) Kevin may have d e s c r i b e d himself as a close-minded youth, but his close friends and family say

otherwise.

Kelsey confided, “We’ve gone through some stuff that’s not the easiest thing for people to go through, and

he’s always been there for me. Even if we went through the same thing, if I was dealing with it worse than him he would be selfless and be supportive for me. If I had to cry, he’s there, to talk, he is there. Every day with him is meaningful” (Heiken).

Kevin Heiken has only been teaching for three years, but it’s astounding how quickly the student body embraced him. As I traverse the MVHS campus it’s easy to find students who know Kevin. I walk towards a small group of students, chatting in the shade of a tree in the Quad. Although the grass is dead from the drought and a hot sun beats overhead, when I ask about the beloved teacher the youth fill with life. “Mr. Heiken?

I love Mr. Heiken!

He’s the BEST!” They go on to animatedly tell each of their favorite things about him, from his “steel wool” beard to the babies on his desk, and from there the stories he’s shared.

Kevin is certainly a man no one will forget any time soon, and this level of popularity is astounding considering he’s only been teaching for three years.

Kevin’s future is a hard thing to predict; even those closest to him have no idea what life path he’ll explore in the future, although all agree that no matter what it is Kevin will be helping others.

Whether he remains a teacher at Moun-

tain View high school, takes up travelling the world full-time, or pursues some new dream unseen as of yet, Kevin will spread his message about taking life as it comes and trying to make the best of it.

When asked about this outlook, Kevin said the following.

Life’s a journey. Life is not leveling up from level one to level two to level three, life is just a continuous journey and you should always be doing something to make sure that your journeying somewhere. Even if you’re not quite sure what your pur-

pose is… there’s always something that you can do to try to bring some purpose in your life to keep yourself moving. The details sometimes can be a healthy thing to [focus on] when you don’t feel that things are going exactly how you would plan them in your mind. There’s always some path that you can go on, and even if you know you’ll wander back to the other path eventually, explore another trail on down the road for a little while.

It’s not a bad thing to do (Heiken).

According to Gilbert, “We make mistakes when we c om pare with the past instead of the

possible” (141).

Despite all of Kevin Heiken’s stories and adventures, when I asked which of his own he would wish was never forgotten his reply caught me off guard.

If I would like to be remembered for something, it would be ’That’s the guy that barely ever had it figured out, but he eventually kind of seemed to get some of it figured out, and he seems to be doing OK.’ I think that that’s something that people often don’t like to hear or talk about, but it’s something that I really feel is a reality. If there’s going to be an enduring legacy to leave, I would hope that that would be it.

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Works Cited Dehaas, Hosh. “On mental health, the perils of perfection and how to build residency in students: Gordon Flett in conversation with Josh Dehaas.”

Maclean’s. January 2014. Student Resources in Context. Web. 10 September 2015.

Fleishman, Jeremy. Personal interview. 8 September 2015.

Gilbert, Daniel. Stumbling on Happiness. New York: Random House, 2006. Print.

Heiken, Kelsey. Personal interview. 11 September 2015.

Heiken, Kevin. Personal interview. 3 September 2015.

Heiken, Kevin. Personal interview. 1 October 2015.

Rosenberg, Carson. Personal interview. 11 September 2015.

Zhou, Kevin. “Teen cynicism is byproduct of college application process.” Gale Database. Christian Science Monitor, 18 July 2005. Web. 10 September 2015.

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