Not every teacher can say they’ve run into students while dancing in the streets of Edinburgh or while on a road trip through Cork, Ireland. For longtime Belmont Hill School teacher John McAlpin, it all comes with the territory.
McAlpin retired from Belmont Hill in June after 41 years of teaching. He’s lived in Belmont for nearly the same amount of time, serving as a Town Meeting member and environmental advocate.
“It’s been an honor. It’s been a joy to be part of the community, to Belmont Hill and Belmont, for that matter,” McAlpin said.
He grew up in the Midwest and first began his career as a geologist, inspired by the natural landscapes and rock formations he saw while traveling the United States as a kid. Four decades ago, he and his wife decided to relocate, wanting a change. McAlpin began interviewing at schools in the Northeast, eventually settling on Belmont Hill.
The couple moved to Massachusetts and settled soon after in Belmont, where they are today.
“New England felt like a kind of a natural fit in a lot of ways,” McAlpin said.
McAlpin served as a Town Meeting member in the early 2010s and was the primary author of Belmont’s first Climate Action Plan. He helped write the plan as a member of Sustainable Belmont.
“If you know what community does for you, then I think you kind of have an obligation to get back in some fashion,” he said.
In the Classroom
McAlpin’s legacy lives on in his students. He’s crossed paths with some while traveling the world; others came back to teach at Belmont Hill with him. He even bumped into one in the middle of an interview with The Voice.
“It’s just so rare that people have such a lasting legacy through the people that they’ve invested in over time, and so that’s the biggest thing I think that captures who John is,” said George Sullivan, a history teacher at Belmont Hill.
McAlpin was also Sullivan’s ninth-grade environmental science teacher. Even in the mid-2000s, McAlpin was widely known as a “very cool teacher” with “amazing hair,” Sullivan said.
In 1988, McAlpin taught seventh grade, and Walker Coppedge was one of his students. Coppedge is now the director of college counseling at Belmont Hill, and coached middle school baseball alongside McAlpin for the past decade. For many students, starting school at Belmont Hill can be intimidating, but McAlpin was there to help ease the transition, welcoming them in with open arms.
“He is just a passionate, warm, connected educator who just did an amazing job getting kids excited about science and also [helped us] acclimate to life at Belmont Hill,” Coppedge said.
As a colleague and co-coach, Coppedge said McAlpin was a mentor to him on and off the baseball field.
“It was a highlight of the year, getting to spend two hours with him every day out on the baseball field for a couple months and chatting about life and school and family and music and baseball and kids, sort of everything in between,” he said.
In every science lesson, McAlpin worked to make science something interesting to each student who walked into his classroom. In one instance, he used soccer balls to represent the solar system, giving students a chance to visualize its size.
“He just has this ability to help kids’ perspective shift in a way that was really transformative for me,” Sullivan said.
For McAlpin, the real lessons he taught didn’tcome from a textbook. With the internet at their fingertips, he said he wanted to instill a lifelong desire for learning in his students.
“What my job is [is] to make them curious enough where they want to go and find out more than I’ve been able to share with them in their classroom,” he said.
Sullivan credits McAlpin’s teachings for his own emphasis on sustainability in the classroom. Together, the two spearheaded sustainability and environmental efforts across campus, including a carbon audit and incorporating classes and school trips centered around environmentalism into Belmont Hill.
McAlpin’s passion for sustainability and his students alike inspired Sullivan, who is now formally taking up the mantle as Belmont Hill’s sustainability coordinator.
“Guys like John, you don’t really realize how special they are until you go around and you get some perspective and it’s like, ‘Oh my God, this guy is incredible,’” Sullivan said.
A Passion for Music
McAlpin knew he wanted to say goodbye to the school that had become his second home after 40 years. In recent years, the longtime music enthusiast had begun writing songs — it felt like the perfect fit.
The song “Band of Brothers” represents the brotherhood formed between the students at Belmont Hill, McAlpin said. The song, performed by Jim Wooster, is recorded and available for streaming on Belmont Hill’s website.
Jokingly described as his “swan song,” “Band of Brothers” was both a goodbye to the school and his students, and an encapsulation of life at Belmont Hill.
“I just try to authentically tell the story of the experience of being at Belmont Hill and capture it in a moment of reflection when you’re about to leave,” McAlpin said.
As he headed into retirement, McAlpin said he and his wife plan to travel and spend plenty of time with their grandchildren. He also plans to continue writing songs, adding, “I will profess to wanting to hear a song or two on the radio at some point.”
