Never Too Niche: Mr. Sinnott and His Hobbies

Photo Credits: Vestavia Hills Magazine

Mr. Sinnott is a teacher who has made a meaningful impression on a large portion of our student body. He’s been mentioned a few times here on the Pillar website—most recently as he received the most votes in a “favorite teacher” poll—but I’m here to dive into a special part of the Mr. Sinnott persona: his eclectic hobbies and interests.

Something struck me on the very first day I spent in his class: Mr. Sinnott seems to be able to talk about anything. Music, sports, philosophy, pop culture, you name it. “I’m a curious person,” he told me in the interview for this article. “It’s something I try to model in my classroom.” He utilizes this insatiable curiosity to forge relationships with his students. He commented, “I want to be curious about my students just as much as I’m curious about the world.”

Mr. Sinnott is our resident 11th-grade AP Language and Composition teacher, and understandably, reading and writing are very much a part of his identity. But this identity is complicated. He admitted that most of the writing he has been doing recently has been related to the “professional space” and that it’s “really hard to think about reading and writing…not through the lens of being a teacher.” And this, he suggested, could be what prompted him to seek out hobbies that were completely unrelated to English… To “allow [him] to have a part of [his] identity that’s separate from the professional one.” 

Why is this so important? Mr. Sinnott explained, “I think good teaching involves the sharing of the self. We work ourselves into our classrooms as human beings, but sometimes we need to be able to have that separation as well.”

One hobby that provides this sort of separation relates to Warhammer. In the vast sci-fi universe of Warhammer, there exist books, video games, a complicated strategic board game, and more. But what Mr. Sinnott has been enjoying in particular, beginning about a year ago, is its “hobbying” side. He likened it to an interest in model trains, but in a sci/fi fantasy universe. He owes this recently-discovered hobby to Mr. Osborne, a teacher at the freshman campus. According to Mr. Sinnott, working on his Warhammer models is a "meditative and artistic outlet,” and it was just something “different to get into.” As this is a time-consuming and expensive hobby, he added that he only works on it a little bit every day. But I think there’s a lesson we can learn from that: in the words of Mr. Sinnott, “like anything, consistency is key”, do “a little bit, often.”

Mr. Sinnott is by no means one-dimensional in his interests. One hobby he has pursued for at least seven years is the martial art of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. He described it to me in a few different ways. One, it looks sort of like wrestling, as it is a grappling martial art. So, there’s no punching and no kicking. Two, “It’s like playing a video game and working out at the same time.” And three, it’s like “human chess.” This intense but rewarding hobby has presented Mr. Sinnott with many challenges to overcome. But he claims to love hobbies that have a “long path to mastery.” He said, “You’re not going to be really good at them for a really long time,” but “there’s always an opportunity for growth.”    

These are only a couple of the hobbies belonging to our beloved Mr. Sinnott. He professed an interest in many more, such as: fly fishing, vinyl records, and rock music—particularly the Australian band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. Evidently, Mr. Sinnott’s interests reach far beyond the confines of English language arts. And let us consider this in light of what makes him such a great teacher: his ability to make every student feel seen, understood, and appreciated.