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Paul Allred, a teacher at NS, loves doing art. It has always been there for him. All the arts were very important to his family growing up, so he has always had that influence in his life.
“I eat, sleep, breathe it. It’s everything to me,” Allred said. “Growing up we planned family trips around art.”
Allred’s father was an artist when he was growing up and he taught art at a college. His dad put Allred in one of his art classes after Allred’s mission and something clicked. That’s when he decided he wanted to have art involved in his career.
His father got both Allred and his younger brother to go into art education. Allred’s younger brother teaches art at Snow College, while Allred teaches at NS. His father and brother were some of the people who influenced him the most to go into art, along with some college professors he had.
Allred’s first teaching job was at Bonneville high school. His dad’s first teaching job was also at Bonneville high.
Allred’s family members are strong believers in good education. He has five siblings: two brothers and three sisters. All of them have gone into education, including their spouses, so 12 of them are in education careers.
Both Allred’s parents were in education also, so they had a large influence on their children to go into teaching.
“My parents really emphasized good education plus good educators,” Allred said. “They thought that was the supreme part of life. They thought it was the best job because you influence so many people.”
He has had the opportunity to teach a lot of students and just wants kids to find a love or appreciation for art.
“You don’t think you have that big of an influence til lat- er,” Allred said, “like when you run into a former student and they come up to you and say, ‘I remember when we did this in your class, and I still do that.’”
Allred has social anxiety, so he doesn’t like to be in new areas or meet new people. Although teaching has never been a huge problem for his anxiety.
“Being a teacher is like a puppet show,” Allred said. “There is a part as a teacher like the song and dance type of thing and then when you go home you’re the totally opposite person.”
He loves to do all types of art, but illustration and photography are his favorites. He wanted to be an animator, but at Utah State they taught illustration so he pursued that.
Right now he is making children’s books that he hopes will publish some day. He will be the writer and illustrator for these books.
“He has huge stacks of papers of just drawings he wants to finish or do in a book,” said Allred’s son, Quinn Allred.
Another thing he likes to do is go hiking. He loves to explore national parks and go on adventures.
After high school, Allred went to the Philippines on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. All the events on the mission affected him tremendously and he learned a lot there. The people who live there are some of the nicest and most giving but also some of the scariest. It made Allred thankful for all he has in his life.
“You would go to bed and machine guns would be going off,” Allred said.
In the Philippines it’s cheaper to pay for a funeral than it is to pay for hospital bills. One day a bus driver ran over a boy and they saw him get back up and so the driver put the bus in reverse so he wouldn’t have to pay the hospital bills. This occurrence was more common in the Philippines than you would think.
Allred said that people would throw rocks at buses because they hated the bus drivers. Riding the buses you would pass by people on the streets and get hit in the head by rocks sometimes. They would load around 300 people on these buses. One day when Allred was riding a bus, he was sitting in the back and a man got on the bus with a big metal contraption and put it in front of the doorway. As they were going they could tell it started heating up.
“There was a pregnant lady holding on the outside of the door and somebody yells out, ‘it’s a bomb!’ and so ev- erybody starts jumping out,” Allred said. “A guy pushed the pregnant lady and she went flipping off the side of the road. The bus driver jumps out, and everybody’s jumping out windows and everyone is screaming and I’m just sitting there thinking we are going to die.”
Although he made it off that bus alive, he is still affected by that situation and a lot of anxiety came from it.
“I have a hard time now when it’s enclosed areas and I feel trapped that panic comes back,” Allred said, “so I have a hard time going to assemblies. If I’m having anxiety issues and being in enclosed area that is hard to get out, I just let myself go out of the room.”
Although this was not the only crazy experience he lived through in the Philippines, he also experienced a volcano erupting.
“We went outside and there was this mushroom cloud going up into the sky,” Allred said, “and for like a month we had ash and it caused a change in the seasons.”
There was even a flood that washed all these bodies out onto the island and sharks would come up and eat them. They couldn’t eat fish for a month until the sharks and fish digested all the people.
Allred has five kids, ranging from 5 years old to 20 years old. He is teaching for his family. It gives him more opportunities to be with his family. He gets to be with them on holidays, and he gets summer’s off. It also helps having the same schedule as his children.
His family is one of the things that make him happiest in life. He always plays games with his kids and spend time with them whenever he could.
“We would go running around the front room and he would try to tag us, and if he grabbed us he would tickle us to death I swear,” Quinn Allred said.
Something most people don’t know about Allred is that he has glaucoma which is an eye disease that causes him to go blind. He has had six eye surgeries so far. This has been one of Allred’s biggest struggles, these surgeries sometimes take away time from his family and seeing his kids.
“You feel sorry and sad that you don’t get to see your father,” said Quinn Allred, “but afterwards he is super cheerful. I’m surprised because he hates getting them, but then after he is excited his eyes are working better than they used to.”
In high school he participated in acting and plays, tennis, swimming, and ice skating.
Allred is a hard worker who always strives to do his best in everything he does.
“It [Allred’s example] makes me do better and make better choices,” Quinn Allred said, “and make sure I’m always on the right path to get all the stuff I want when I’m older.”
Below are pieces of Paul Allred’s photography he has done throughout the years. Allred is also an illustrator and working on writing children’s books.
