Life On The Other Side: Two teachers share their outside school passions

Just as every person is unique, teachers are also much more than meet the eye. 

Kailyn Bettle teaches composition and perception, modern literature and is the ELP teacher. Outside of school, Bettle tries to keep busy, but that has changed since the May birth of her son. “I usually like to always be doing something or have something planned, but now I spend my weekends trying to soak up as much time with my son.” 

Outside of spending time with family, Bettle finds peaceful and active hobbies. “I love reading, journaling and doing almost anything outside like hiking, kayaking and running.”

Bettle grew up going to national parks with her family and wants to continue that. “I love all of the variety across different national parks from mountains to deserts, and feel that the rangers do an amazing job maintaining trail systems and leading super cool programs.” 

Bettle has visited 28 of the national parks and is almost halfway to her goal of visiting all 63. “My favorite is Glacier. I love the mountains, the beautiful but challenging hikes and all of the wildlife you can see there.”

Jason Steffen is a veteran teacher of over 25 years and teaches chemistry, astronomy and eighth grade science. His years of teaching have been intertwined with his greatest hobby, disc golf. “The hobby I’ve been doing since I was probably 10 years old, for a long time now, is playing disc golf. I’ve been playing disc golf professionally since I was 18 years old, so almost 40 years now.” 

Most weekends, Steffen is playing disc golf either competitively or with friends. Over the course of his career, Steffen has played in a large number of tournaments. “I’ve played in probably six world championships before,” he said. “I’ve been playing local tournaments since the ’80s and I’m almost to 500 tournaments. I think I’m at 471 tournaments played so far.” 

Being a teacher has helped Steffen’s ability to reach such a high number of tournaments.  “It’s always nice to have the summers off so I can play … disc golf.” 

At the beginning of his career, playing disc golf wasn’t easy. “If you want to look at like the ’80s and ’90s, there were not a lot of disc golf courses around, so you would have to travel five to six hours in any direction.” This has gotten easier as Steffen’s career has gone on. “There’s so many courses close that you don’t have to travel as much as you used to.”

Steffen has seen a lot of success in his illustrious career. “I‘ve played in some major tournaments where I’ve had top five finishes, so I‘ve been fairly successful over the years.” Steffen’s skill and commitment to disc golf has paid off with a spot in the Iowa Disc Golf Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame was founded in 2011, and inductions occur every two years. “I was voted in the second class in 2013, and there’s not many people in that, probably less than 20 people in the Hall of Fame in Iowa.”