10 | Phoenix Christian Preparatory | Winter 2022
MASTER TEACHER IN THE MAKING Mia Schlaak’s journey towards nobility You can’t help but feel the going to be a part of childhood excitement and beauty as you memories; I’m going to help shape walk into Mrs. Schlaak’s classroom. their future. Not everyone gets to Mrs. Schlaak started as a first-year do that! Teaching is a noble thing teacher at Phoenix Christian in to do. And I realized, I do not 2018-19. You can imagine what that deserve this responsibility!” And that was like, a first-year teacher in a responsibility, Mrs. Schlaak does not pandemic. That caused her serious take lightly. She believes that her doubt as she struggled to orient to classroom should be academically teaching, learn rigorous and as fun the curriculum as it is rigorous. and teach online She emphasizes for two months. the need to teach She reflected children how to back to those think critically, to days, “I remember challenge each one thinking, what to their greatest have I done? I potential. With could have gone each lesson plan, into a million she asks herself other careers, but how she can I chose teaching.” make it fun and She thought back imaginative. The - MIA SCHLAAK to an impactful children should podcast she be smiling, excited listened to during to learn the next those days of thing, even if it is struggle. The difficult. It seems in topic was false humility; feeling as the later years of elementary, many though you are “above” what you’re students lose their love for school. doing. “When I’m asked what I do When she notices that in a student, for a living and I say I’m a teacher, it becomes her goal for that student most people respond with, ‘bless to LOVE school again. She spends your heart.’ They feel bad for me. I an extraordinary amount of time, asked myself at that moment, what creating this environment in her else would I want to be doing? I’m classroom.
When I’m asked what I do for a living and I say I’m a teacher, most people respond with, ‘bless your heart’.
