By Rosie Smith
Over the years, many veteran teachers at McNicholas High School have faced numerous changes in education.
Anatomy and Physiology teacher Ms. Cat Humphries, who is in her twelfth year at McNick, shared that the change from eight classes every day to the block schedule helped her teach material more thoroughly. “Students can have a really extended lab time, and I can teach really high-level labs,” she said. Humphries explained that because of the block schedule, it has made her a better teacher, and it has helped how students understand lessons. “I think that I’m able to give better lessons to students who are able to absorb it, and I genuinely think that students are excited to come back to an anatomy,” she added.
Visual Arts teacher Mrs. Sarah Nestheide, who has been teaching for twenty-four years, shared that technology had a positive impact on the way she is able to teach her students. “When I first started teaching, all the digital stuff was different. If I wanted to show something on a projector, we didn’t even have a projector,” she said. She explained that it’s convenient for the students who have their own computers so they can look at projects or visuals of art. “The fact that all of the students have a computer is amazing,” she added.
Science teacher Mrs. Chrystel Wells, who has been teaching for thirty-five years, shared that giving students the opportunity to conduct labs and problems on their own is beneficial to their learning. “Instead of teaching a formula, let them collect data and then what they’re able to do is once they deal with the data, graph it, find the slope, then they develop the law,” she said. Wells also explained the importance of understanding a student’s position when learning. “You can maintain high expectations, but you also have to be cognizant of what your students are able to do, and there’s no point in stressing them out to the point of abandonment. There’s a balance between having high expectations and being humane, because if you’re not, you know, you don’t get as much back,” she added.
Social Studies teacher Mr. Shawn Young, who has been teaching for forty years, shared that he found himself navigating different ways to approach lessons. “I taught for 27 years and then I took the job working in development here and I was doing alumni relations for 5 or 6 years. Then I came back into the classroom and I was like, wow, when you step away for a couple years, and you come back, you can see it [the change],” he said. Young added that because the needs of society are always changing, changes must occur for how students apply what they learn to the real world. “When I first started I was teaching at Mercy McAauley and in home economics, they taught the girls how to make beds and clean toilets and do dishes and cook meals, I don’t think you’d see a class like that anymore,” he added.
Theology teacher Mr. Jeff Hutchinson, who has been teaching for twenty-six years, shared that teaching only seniors when originally only teaching freshmen, changed his perspective about student life. “There are students that can’t keep up. For some that’s the pace at which they have the capacity to read and internalize information as they read, and for others, that’s I’ve got four AP classes on the same day,” he said. Hutchinson also explained the importance and understanding that students have other classes to balance. “I would say there’s an approach for me of teaching seniors of knowing that there’s an extra layer of the first semester of September and October has a whole extra layer to them,” he said.
