Harris joins HSJ Online oversight committee

HSJ Online would like to welcome contributing writer Brock Harris to our oversight committee!

The 2004 Hauser graduate teaches seventh and eighth grade English at St. Bartholomew Catholic School in Columbus. Prior to teaching there, Harris taught at Waldron Jr./Sr. High School in Waldron for 11 years.

Harris credits his calling to education as being inspired by his grandfather, Don, who taught for nearly 40 years, as well as the demeanor and teaching styles of other instructors he had during his years at Hauser.

During a recent phone chat, Harris was asked about what brought him to writing and teaching, and now to serving with HSJ Online, for which he credits David Webster, in part, for inspiring him to adopt writing as a creative outlet.

“David Webster was my fifth grade teacher at Hope elementary,” 36-year-old Harris recalls. “When we were planning, he asked us what we wanted to do for a field trip. I remembered his sister, Sally, is a musician and I love music and thought how cool would it be for all of us to go to a recording studio and see what it is like.”

Following that subsequent fieldtrip, Harris’ class recorded themselves on a few more songs for a CD Sally Webster later released, Harris recalls.

Harris said he always made it a point to stop and talk with Webster in the halls whenever he would see him.

Flash forward to just a few short years ago when Harris’ and Webster’s paths crossed again.

A chance meeting at WILLow LeaVes of Hope, located on the Town Square, led to a discussion about writing and the extension of an invitation on Webster’s part to Harris to write for HSJ Online, Harris says.

“Over the course of a year or two I wrote a couple of articles and then I went on sabbatical for a while,” Harris says.

When he isn’t teaching you will find Harris spending time with his wife, Carrie, and their 5 ½-year-old son, Ian. Although he enjoys reading, Harris gravitates to the outdoors where he enjoys fishing, camping and hiking with his family.

Harris says there is therapy in writing. The act of writing allows for a release of those things we normally push to the side, he says.

It is also allows one to find humor and balance in life while accentuating those moments of grace in a world of chaos.

“It is about trying to find the humbleness and pleasantries in the things that are in between,” Harris says. “It is in the daily things that you need to find humor and grace. The reason you go back to a text is because you relate to it somehow. I inject humor [in my writing] because some times that is how I keep my sanity with some situations.”