Throughout students’ four hectic high school years, teachers serve as steadfast anchors in the ebb and flow of secondary school life. However, at least four veteran Diamond Bar High School teachers, including multi-sport coach and math teacher Tony McCabe, Journalism and English teacher Doug List, Photography teacher Bill Foley and math teacher Hana Matloub, will be retiring this year.
List joined the DBHS staff in 2011, bringing with him 30 years of experience from the newspaper industry, most notably as a design editor for the Los Angeles Times. Throughout his career, List has taught sophomore, junior and senior English in addition to mentoring students in Journalism 1 and Journalism 2.
“The main thing I’ll miss is just standing in front of students… and interacting with students,” List said. “Absolutely the best part of being a teacher is getting to know those students, especially for the students that I have as freshmen and then I see them evolve through four years and graduate. That’s been a great pleasure, a great reward to have.”
He is particularly proud of The Bull’s Eye’s success in write-off competitions throughout his 10 year tenure.
“I’m lucky that I got to work on the newspaper and got to guide students in the newspaper so that, to me, is my legacy. It is how The Bull’s Eye continues to evolve and improve,” List said. “I feel proud that we were able to turn that into something that goes outside of this school and wins awards and is seen as a really good high school paper.”
Comparatively, Photography teacher Foley has spent his entire career working in the field of education.
“I’ve been here for ten years and it was a great way to end my career as a photography teacher and as a teacher,” Foley said. “I worked at Ron Hockwalt Academies before I came here and before that, I taught computers and PE at the elementary schools. And then, before that, I worked at private schools. So I was 18 years in private schools and 18 years in public school.”
At DBHS, Foley started by teaching IC3 (Internet Core Competency Certification), then transitioned to focus on Photography and Photoshop classes. He also oversaw an articulation agreement between DBHS and Mt. SAC for some Photography students to receive college credit.
“What I will miss most is how the kids at Diamond Bar behave, how they make me feel about life. It makes me feel younger,” Foley said. “The way they view things when they’re out shooting photos is so different from what I would choose because their minds are wide open to possibilities. They’ll come back with photos from the campus that I would not even think to take because they look at things a different way than I do.
Foley was honored as Diamond Bar High School Rookie of the Year in 2011, then as Diamond Bar High School Teacher of the Year and Walnut Valley Unified School District Teacher of the Year in 2017.
“What’s more important to me than anything else is that I taught with passion and I was fair to my students,” he said.
Meanwhile, Algebra 1 teacher McCabe has been working at DBHS since the school’s founding in 1983 while accepting numerous coaching commitments over the course of his career. The two-time Brahma of the Year has coached multiple sports including basketball and golf, amounting to over 130 seasons of coaching over his career.