Chris Kopel is a new IB teacher at Palm Harbor University High School.
He took a pay cut to take the job with Pinellas County Schools, but Kopel said it was worth it to live by the water. He teaches the Theory of Knowledge, a research- and discussion-based class that he describes as a course on "how to person."
Before Hurricane Helene, Kopel rented a house on Madeira Beach that was walking distance from the water. He remembers a particular moment of peace from before the storm.
"I was at the beach in the water, the sun was going down ... I very consciously remember [thinking] I don't think I'm ever going to live anywhere else for the rest of my life," Kopel said. "And I made it, like, eight more days."
This week, WUSF is telling the stories of people who are returning to work amid ongoing recovery efforts following Hurricanes Debby, Helene and Milton.
Kopel evacuated ahead of Hurricane Helene, which brought record storm surge to the Tampa Bay region. When he returned to the island, he found his rental home unlivable and many of his belongings destroyed.
"I came back. All my windows were intact and everything, but the damage was pretty severe, and it took me a couple days to get onto the island because they weren't letting people on," Kopel said.
There was very limited access to the Pinellas County barrier islands, even for residents, in the days following Helene.
"I had about 5- to 5½ feet [of water in the house] ... and there had been standing human waste in my house for about three days," Kopel said. "So anything that survived the storm died that death."
Kopel was able to save some black-and-white photos of his grandparents' wedding day. Later, he was also able to save some clothes.
Kopel said he remembers his first day back to school for a variety of reasons, including his outfit.
Besides being "the new teacher" at school, Kopel said the students knew him by his professional dress.
"I wear the same outfit to work every day," Kopel said. "This is something I'm known for. .. so the kids immediately noticed I was not in uniform (laughs). I was wearing flip-flops. I didn't have any shoes that survived the storm."
So, in true show-and-tell style, Kopel brought in pictures of the damage and answered students' questions including the most urgent of all: Were your pets OK?
"They want to make sure all the pets have survived ... I have an English bulldog, who is 11, and he does not swim. And I have two cats, and they, to the best of my knowledge, also don't swim," Kopel said.
"Once I told them that the pets had survived, they they would ask a few questions about what I had lost, but mostly I just generalized, like I had lost everything.”
Kopel said that balancing work and recovery after Helene was difficult, but returning to his students was easy.
"It was eight hours a day — you couldn't figure it out, you know, and you didn't have to worry about it … So there was a little window of calm. And ... the kids are fun and interesting and exciting, and it's very easy to get distracted by the fairly joyous mayhem they bring to the classroom every day," Kopel said.
He said the students are incredibly thoughtful, too. Several students at Palm Harbor University High School, where the mascot is "the Hurricane," organized a Go Fund Me to fund-raise for Kopel and a beloved English teacher who was also impacted by Helene.
"They launched it on us in the courtyard and read a whole thing about it, which we both found horrifying because despite the fact that we spend all of our time in front of kids ... most teachers don't like to be the center of attention (laughs)," Kopel said. "We like the kids to be the center of attention."
The nearly $7,000 was distributed between the teachers, and Kopel said it has allowed him to refurbish small apartment items claimed by Helene, like a microwave and a TV.
But really, Kopel said the sentiment of students rallying to help their teacher is what sticks with him. He said that's why he's refrained from spending it all.
"I might be a little emotionally attached to it too. It still sits there as a reference to, like, how much those little monsters cared," Kopel said.
Kopel also received assistance from FEMA and is now renting an apartment in St. Petersburg. He's no longer living by the water, but he said "it's a roof over my head."
This audio postcard is part of a series on people's experiences returning to work after a series of powerful storms in the 2024 hurricane season.
