STAFF PROFILE: Bastin uses distance learning to prepare for retirement

PHOTO: Eric Bastin enjoys some of his favorite snacks while on a fishing trip, preparing for what his eventual retirement may look like.

By Mattias RowenBale,

BlueDevilHUB.com Staff–

Davis High science teacher Eric Bastin enjoys watching TV and drinking Dr. Pepper. Since COVID-19,  he’s been indulging in these activities more, as well as spending time with his “pandemic puppy.” 

However, he misses traveling and going out to eat, and especially, teaching in person.

Before he was a Davis High science teacher, he received a master’s in ecology and worked as a consultant for about five years. Bastin has now been teaching for 23 years and will continue to do so for an additional 15 years. He loves his job and does not have plans for anything else in the near future. 

“I don’t know what I’d do if I retired. I mean, most people think about it. They retire, they go on a cruise and then they die. I don’t want to do that,” Bastin said.  “But I think teachers have a head start on that because we kind of get used to this retirement with every summer having a mini vacation. And so by the time we finally retire, in theory, we’re good at it. I think I’ll be able to fill it quite, quite easily.”

Bastin may choose to fill some of his eventual retirement with soda and TV, but he’ll likely spend a lot of time fishing as well. He first got into fishing in graduate school so that he could relate to his teacher, and now spends quite a bit of his summers in his fishing kayaks. 

“I think [fishing is] just an excuse to get outside. You know, you don’t look like a fool, […] you’re walking around with a purpose,” Bastin said.

He often goes fishing with his friend and colleague Timothy Peeveyhouse. “There’s a place up in the Sierra, we’ll go up there and go trout fishing at a little spring that we like to go to […] or we might even go over just over to Putah Creek here and fish from kayaks there,” Peeveyhouse said.