Editor’s note: This is the fourth in a series of stories that were written by students in Jodi Williams’ English 1101 class at the University of North Georgia Blue Ridge campus. They are first-hand accounts of local people who have made an impact on the authors. As you read them, you will see ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
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Bubba Gibbs recalls riding the Trans-Siberian railroad from Beijing, China, to Moscow, Russia, with only three other Americans. “I had grown up with the impression that Russia is this dominant superpower equivalent to the United States. And when I got there, I realized that it is a third world country for the most part, and taxi doors don’t open and close. You have to hold them shut sometimes to go down the road. The level of poverty across Russia is extremely high, but it was spectacular to stand in the Hermitage and Saint Petersburg and see that palace is just unbelievable.” This is just one of the many different things Bubba Gibbs has done and seen throughout his life.
Bubba graduated from Fannin County High School in 1987. “I enrolled in Georgia Tech. Initially, I was going to study architecture, well that didn’t work out for me, so I went on to study industrial engineering.” Bubba graduated from Georgia Tech in 1992. While he was in college, he started doing a cooperative education program. During his time in the program, he spent fifty percent of his time working with Reliance Electric. The program gave him a head start when he graduated, in that, the company offered him a job as a factory engineer in Toccoa, Georgia.
Bubba spoke about his time spent in Mexico when stating, “NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) was enacted and people started sending things out of the country to Mexico to do manufacturing. So, after college, I quickly went to Mexico and started building a factory down there. Then the company moved more stuff out of the United States.”
In 1995, Bubba was given the opportunity to move with the company to be a manufacturing engineer in Shanghai, China. He stayed in Shanghai for three years and went from being a manufacturing engineer to a general manager of the facility. After time spent in Shanghai, Bubba went to Beijing and was promoted to the director of marketing for Asia Pacific. The company had changed hands several times. When he moved to Beijing, a British company called Markham purchased Asia Pacific.
Bubba moved back to the United States in 1999. “I was 30 years old and it was either staying in China for the next 20 years, or make my way back to the United States. I went to Dallas, Texas, for a year and I was in charge of marketing for fiber optic and delivery equipment.” Fiber optics are more common nowadays, but in 2000, not many people had access to high speed internet in their homes. After time spent in Texas, Bubba got the opportunity to move to England.
“In January 2001, I moved to England to set up an office there. My actual job title was Vice President of Europe, Middle East and Africa.” He was living in England when September 11, 2001, occurred. Bubba was riding in a car in England when it was announced what happened that day in the United States. His phone would not connect with anybody. It took him until later that day to see what happened when he arrived back at his hotel in Italy. There he was to remain at his hotel for two weeks. The Italians were very sympathetic towards Bubba during this time.
The telecommunications market started turning down in 2002. The company asking him to move back to Dallas. “I didn’t enjoy Dallas. I don’t want to live in Dallas and I took the opportunity to leave the engineering field at that point. The business world and I moved back to Blue Ridge, Georgia.”
When Bubba returned, he had property that was developing. He spent the next five years creating lots. He realized he didn’t want to go back to travelling so often. He spent around 300 nights staying in hotels in the year 1999. Most of his family worked in education, which encouraged his decision to become a teacher. Bubba is currently an engineering, audio and video teacher at Fannin County High School. There, he has been teaching for over ten years. He was an engineer for fifteen years prior to teaching. Teaching allows him to not work as often as before.
Bubba’s favorite thing about teaching is the ability to alter a student’s life for the better. “I’ve altered the futures of a lot of kids, whether it is the kid that never thought they could go to college, and they went to college or the student that came to my engineering class and said, ‘oh my gosh, I love this.’” Bubba believes that every day creates an opportunity for him to change the future of other people. In the business world, these opportunities are not given.
Throughout his teacher career, though, Bubba has had challenges. “Teaching is difficult. I was not ready.” He had gotten used to the business world where coffee breaks and chatting with coworkers is simple. In schools, students come in when the bell rings and leave when it rings again. Then, another group comes in.
“That was one of the biggest challenges was to get used to the routine of managing the classroom. Now I teach a lot of different classes. Most teachers will teach two or three subjects for the whole school year. I could teach as many as seven in a school year, juggling all the different activities, along with being the technology student advisor.” While doing so many different things in and out of the classroom, he still has to figure out ways to get students motivated. Having traveled around the world and seen many different environments has helped him learn how to help students of different types of backgrounds.
During the beginning of COVID-19, many students quit caring about school. “I had like five students out of 70 that continue to work after they found out and seeing that there are some bright spots out there where kids really do want to learn.” Seeing some students still working and trying to learn had a positive effect on Bubba during the pandemic.
Bubba has done many different things over the years. He has traveled around the world and seen different cultures. He believes everyone should travel the world if they have the chance. “We may see some pictures of Haiti after an earthquake or something, but if you actually go out to the rest of the world, it broadens your mind and you get to see how other people think and do things. I believe that part of my old career was the best part.” Seeing how different people live has made a large impact on Bubba.
Bubba has never stopped traveling. He recently went to Hawaii, the Dominican Republic and California with his wife. He has seen the sun rise and set over the Great Wall of China and seen the Great Pyramids of Giza.
Likewise, Bubba never stopped learning throughout his life. “I have now achieved my masters in adult career education from Valdosta State University. I have started this semester to get my specialist in teacher leadership. I will finish my teacher leadership specialist in December next year. Then I will have the option to add on a leadership credential, which would let me be a principal or a school administrator.”
In the future, Bubba would like to be a school administrator. He believes that bringing business knowledge into administrations could really help schools across the nation, “where there’s not a lot of business knowledge put to managing a school system and schools are in the business of educating kids for positive outcomes. But it is a business and schools succeed and don’t succeed in making their customers happy.” Bubba believes he can change the school system for the better and help more students see their true potential.