a Teacher Great? Upper School English instructor Meg Carlsen says, “In grade
how to teach by teaching. I made a lot of mistakes and still
school I was often the kid in the classroom helping the other
do,” and Lower School teacher Marcy Wegner says, “Some of it
kids in the room understand the material. In college I would
was intuitive, but mostly I believe you just need to get in
organize study groups and create study guides for the
there and try! I learn from my mistakes just like my students.”
material.” Middle School teacher Mary Jane Curran says she’s been “teaching since I was a young person: working with neighborhood kids, coaching, religious education, etc.” Lower School teacher Kim Schafer relates, “I’m pretty sure I was born to teach but I learned a lot from my teachers — the good
Drama instructor and Master Teacher Tom Hegg says, “I am learning on the fly. Kids and colleagues are my teachers,” Lower School Chaplain Nan Zosel says she learned by “diving in,” and Upper School Media Generalist Kristin Markert puts
and the not so good.” And Fauver says, “I spent every summer at my family’s camp from the time I was very young, surrounded by great teachers who spent summers there too. I started coaching at 16, in part because I realized that was the best way to keep going back to camp as an adult.”
LEARNING FROM THEIR PARENTS Wong is a teacher who credits a parent — in her case her father, who assigned homework for her and her siblings over school vacations and via weekly correspondence when she came to the United States for boarding school — for inspiring her to become a teacher herself. Many other Breck faculty members come from teaching
Ty Thayer ’90
families as well. Lower School teacher Sherri Rogers recalls, “I learned to teach when I was four. My parents were both educators and I inherited their genes. They also designed a
it this way: “Teaching is an art and a science. To learn how,
classroom for me in our basement so I could teach all the
you study the literature and the methods of good teachers.
neighborhood children. I guess I was a natural and a self-
Then you practice.”
taught teacher.”
Some learned by teaching non-academic subjects first.
And for some it was, seemingly, destiny. Middle and Upper
Middle School teacher Jay Rainville-Squier says, “I first
School teacher Katie Scherer says, “I mostly learned the
started teaching as a martial arts instructor during seventh
gratification that comes from teaching from my mom, who
grade. I took over the karate studio during high school. From
was coincidentally an eighth-grade English teacher. I tried
the first lesson I taught in seventh grade, I was hooked.”
really hard to do something different from my mom, but
Upper School English teacher Memry Roessler says she
here I am, following her lead.”
learned from “having children under foot.” Upper School
LEARNING BY DOING Most of the Breck teachers who answered our question about how they learned to teach provided some variation on the
Dean Chris Ohm reflects, “I began coaching when I was 14. I had to deal with younger kids and parents at that time. I have taken every interaction and moment in education as a learning experience.”
theme of trial-and-error. Three who focused on the latter part
For another Breck Master Teacher, Upper School Spanish
of the equation are Middle School teacher Dan Ratliff, who
instructor Carol Harrison, self-knowledge played an impor-
says, “years and years of doing it not super well.” Lower
tant role. “I learned by teaching but also learning to be
School Resource Instructor Jackie Keepers says, “I learned
myself,” she says.
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