“I was here at the beginning,” states Brian Crisp. The “here’’ to which he refers is Benton Grade School, and the beginning was his fifth-grade year, back when the building housed fifth through eighth grades as the middle school. He says “here”, rather than “there” because besides being a former student, Brian has been a teacher at said school for nearly thirty-five years. “I’m one of the older ones that are still walking the halls here,” he jokes.
But were it not for a fortuitous connection in his youth with an influential teacher, things may have turned out differently. “There were many, many teachers in the Benton district who played a role in making me who I am today as
a teacher,” he says, “but it was Bill Wazorik that lit the fire underneath me.”

Wazorik was Brian’s eighth-grade geography teacher, but Brian learned more than the state capitals and where to find Mozambique on a map in his class – much more. It was in Mr. Wazorik’s class that Brian discovered his passion and learned what he would spend the rest of his life doing. “It was in that class that I opened up a geography book, and saw pictures of all these places around the world. And I
was mesmerized,” he recalls. He may not have known it at the time, but on that fateful day, Brian would set off on a journey that would eventually take him around the world, and right back to Benton, Illinois and Benton Grade School. “I knew then that I wanted to teach geography, I wanted to travel the world, and – because I had such great experiences here – I wanted to teach here. And it happened,” he marvels.

Brian has lived in Benton his entire life, but even as a child, he was dreaming of traveling to far-away places. He mentions a favorite quotation by the author Hans Christian Andersen, who said, “To travel is to live.” Brian has taken this sentiment to heart, saying “That’s basically been my life.”

“When I was a kid, I had posters of foreign places on my bedroom wall, because I wanted to see what those places