He builds models, paints pictures and design interiors in when he’s not in front of his classroom. Art teacher, right? Nope.

“I’m a Latin teacher, boring interests me,” Timothy O’Flaherty said. “I can do Latin in my sleep. I dream in Latin.”

O’Flaherty said that when he was finished redecorating his house, it looked bigger than before.

“I’m a whiz at interior design,” O’Flaherty said. “For me, a house should be beautiful,”

O’Flaherty enjoys making models and painting photo realism. Digital art teacher Jim Finch said he saw come of O’Flaherty’s work at a faculty art show a few years ago.

“I thought it was fabulous,” Finch said. “He really has got an eye … I was really impressed. His proportion and scale, everything looked really accurate and yet it was an interesting piece.”

O’Flaherty has been crafting since he was a child.

“Like most creative people, in my experience, people who are really good at what they do, like craft, started when they were young,” O’Flaherty said.

Throughout the years, O’Flaherty has held several jobs including being a tour guide in Italy and serving in the military for 34 years.

“It’s kind of a synergy of all my interests,” O’Flaherty said. “I’m a Roman historian who wants to make movies, write novels and make pictures about Romans.”

O’ Flaherty said having to write Latin lesson plans for grades seven through 12 is the most time-consuming part of his teaching job.

“You guys change a lot between seventh and 12th grade,” he said.  “What works for a senior doesn’t necessarily mean you can reverse engineer and apply that same technique to a seventh-grader.”

By Aislinn O’Neill