History teacher Paul Zens excited to be back

By Dawson Lindahl

History teacher Paul Zens has returned to North High after a year long tour working at Fargo South. He was a long-term substitute for Sean Ritchie, the previous western civilization and AP European History teacher, during the 2016-2017 school year.
After the substitute teacher job, Zens accepted a full-time employment at Fargo South, but he always knew he wanted to come back to the northside of town.
Many students are unaware that Zens has a history at Fargo North that dates far beyond his 2016-17 subbing job. When he was at NDSU, he was a substitute teacher for US history teacher Kris Dougherty, and also observed Athletic Director Travis Christianson while he was still teaching social studies.
Zens has not always been a fan of history though. In fact, he hated it when he was in high school.

“I hated [history] to be honest with you. I really disliked Western Civ and US History. When I went to Fergus Falls Community College, I took a class with a teacher named Arlin Nikolas, who was a history teacher. His classes were fun and I found them interesting, so I started taking a lot of history classes.
I started going to NDSU after that, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew I liked history so I took every history class that they offered. When I ran out of history classes to take, I had to make a decision, so I went into teaching,” said Zens.
The shift from subbing to creating your own course material can often be rocky for some teachers, but Zens didn’t see it as a huge problem. Subbing is practically just classroom management, but creating your own material is part of being a good teacher.
Zens admits that he didn’t create a lot of his own material at first, but that’s forgivable given the circumstances. However, during the second semester of his first year at North, he started to create his own material, and with that, began to develop the style that his students know.
“Most teachers would say that for their first two or three years, they don’t consider themselves to be good teachers, but after that you start to find your own style, and I’d say that I’m currently in that stage of finding my own and becoming a good teacher,” said Zens.
Zens is glad to be back teaching at North. “I’ve told most people that someday my goal was to be back at North… that’s nothing against South though, no matter where I had gone, I would have wanted to come back to North,” said Zens.
He is familiar with the staff and students on the northside of town, so teaching here seemed like a no-brainer. Also, at South, he was unable to teach AP European History, his favorite class.
“In a perfect world, someday there would be around 5 AP Euro classes here, and I could teach Euro full time,” said Zens.
Upon Zens’ return to North High, he finally feels like he’s back where he belongs. But even at South, he never felt out of place completely. “I would consider Fargo my home,” said Zens.