Most people would not expect a Latin teacher to scuba dive or have history with the Mafia, but Mr. Tuths, the new Latin teacher at U. City, has surprising connections to both of these things.
Tuths, whose name was changed from Tuozzo by his great-grandfather to avoid Mafia association, started teaching for the first time in August. After earning his graduate degree from Washington University, he returned from his native Boston to teach at U. City High School.
“I really value public education, so I wanted to become a public teacher as opposed to a private school teacher,” Tuths said.
So far, U. City seems to be a good fit.
“I have really, really great students,” Tuths said.
Latin is the perfect subject for him to teach to those students, Tuths says. While it is considered a dead language, he still thinks Latin is very important.
“It is the foundation of all romance languages, like Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian,” said Tuths.
Aside from that, he says that Latin is hugely influential in the English language.

When he’s not busy with Latin, Tuths enjoys baking. He is especially interested in making pizza and makes it using his own recipe and a sourdough culture from Italy. Cultures are substances used in order to make bread (and pizza dough) ferment and rise.

“Imagine a jar of what looks like pancake batter in your fridge, and you have to feed it every six months with flour and water to keep it alive,” Tuths said.

He also has an advanced certification in scuba diving, which he earned while on vacation in Florida with a group of three friends.

“The week during which we [the group of friends] were going through our guided and then independent dives for certification, we stayed at a camp site in a large tent that the four of us shared,” he said. “We decided once we were done with the required dives that we wanted to explore Florida a bit.”

His group proceeded to pack supplies into trash bags, swim out to an uninhabited island, and stay there for two nights. They even ate conch they caught themselves.

Whether out exploring Florida or teaching students about the imperfect verb tense, Mr. Tuths is an energetic, fun guy, his students say.

“Mr. Tuths is an energetic and helpful teacher,” said junior Porcia Rhodes. “He is very hands-on with his work and actually helps students with anything they need help with. I love coming to his class.”