Derek Hough Wants YOU To Nominate Your Favorite Teacher For A Seriously Cute Educational Getaway

Derek Hough’s baby blues pierce right through my soul, even on Zoom—the Dancing with the Stars icon is in his prime, honey, and I’m definitely not distracted from the job I came to do. We’re here to chat about Hough’s latest collab—a contest with Chase and Southwest that’s about to send three of America’s favorite teachers on the educational trip of their dreams (and hook seven runners-up with 30,000 bonus points each)—so start brainstorming about which teacher you’ll nominate while enjoying the fruits of my labor, i.e. Hough’s answers to my relatively normal questions which were not at all watered-down versions of the original unhinged dialogue inhibited gracefully by my SSRIs. Here’s to the teacher who touched your life in a much more wholesome way than my high school’s wrestling coach!

Tell us more about the Teach the Love contest!
It [started] on World Teacher Day, and anyone can nominate their favorite teacher [through November 9th]. If they win, they not only get to go on this amazing trip, but to be inspired and bring that back to the classroom to teach these amazing kids. Teachers are the absolute heroes, especially over these last couple of years, so it’s a great collab.

Sounds pretty great, especially the five destinations the winners can choose from (Chicago, Maui, Washington, D.C., Palm Springs, and Nashville). And we know you’re a big traveler yourself, so please share more about that!
I love traveling and adventure—I went on a lot of road trips with family growing up, and I’ve traveled all over the world as a competitive dancer. Some of my favorite places to go just to get in touch with nature are right here in the US: Yosemite, Zion, whitewater rafting in Cataract Canyon and the Grand Canyon. I also love to travel right from my backyard, just driving one or two hours away, or a short flight to the desert, NorCal, Big Sur, Monterey, et cetera.

If one of your Dancing with the Stars pupils nominated you and you won this contest, where would you go?
I was in Washington, D.C. last year for the Kennedy Center Honors and ate at the best restaurant of my entire life—like, best food I’ve ever eaten, so I would love to go back there because I really want my fiance to experience this food. So I’d go there, but not for the reason you’d expect!

Looking back, who were some of your favorite teachers over the course of your schooling and career?
Mrs. Fox—I think I was in first or second grade, she had this amazing energy about her and made everything fun and exciting to learn. It could be easy to fall in the trap of just teaching the curriculum, but she really went above and beyond.

[Also, my dance teacher] Rick Robinson—it wasn’t just the curriculum or the books. It was life lessons, how to be a good person, how to be kind. That little extra goes a long way. He just taught me by example with energy—the importance of energy, and he had that. He was always just this presence. Whenever I’m talking with or teaching somebody, I’m kind of emulating his energy because I know how it influenced me.

This article has been edited and condensed for clarity.

[Photos via @derekhough]