Tate O’Grady is the new face at Randall, and this teacher hung up his fire coat for a life of teaching students. By applying his skills and experience of being a firefighter, O’Grady will guide his students through the forensics field to see if this is something that they truly want to be.

“Being a firefighter was interesting, but it depended on the day,” O’Grady said. “There could be anything from a little fender bender car crash where you’re just called out to it, to a structure fire so you’re constantly on edge trying to prepare yourself for what’s next.”

O’Grady said after his days in high school, life took him into the fire academy and EMT school, but after all of that work was done he decided he could use his experience as a firefighter in the classroom.

“My main goal for this year is to narrow the field in what you want to do in life after high school,” O’Grady said. “I feel like my school didn’t do a very good job in preparing me for this, so if you could take my class and say ‘hey I’m super into forensics’ that’s awesome but if you could also feel that it’s not your thing that’s great because I feel that I narrowed it down for you.”

O’Grady said that starting a teaching year was interesting especially with all these new procedures, but he enjoys his time teaching so far. 

“I am excited to teach forensics there’s a lot of interesting things to go into it that make it up,” O’Grady said. “But I really enjoy getting to know my students and I’m looking forward to the rest of the year.”