The bell rings. Students flood the first level E-House. A girl walks into the classroom, iPod pumping music into her ears. Two boys enter the room. The classroom slowly fills with freshman English students. At the doorway, long-term sub Erin Miller stands greeting her students.
“I’m going to fail my math test,” one student says to another.
A 2008 ALHS graduate, Miller remembers feeling this way just four years ago. She understands the feeling. The feeling of stress of classes. Being incredibly busy. How hard it can be to concentrate on one subject while worrying about another.
A girl walks up, book in hands.
“I spent all night reading. I couldn’t put it down,” she says.
Miller smiles and replies: “It’s such a good book. What part are you at?”
A short conversation about the book ensues. Miller finds her age to make her more relatable to her students, her having graduated four years ago from high school and fresh out of college.
The bell rings and Miller enters the classroom. The room is alive with the chatting of the students.
“You look pretty today,” one girl tells Miller.
Miller laughs and thanks her, then tells the students to get their books out for 15 minutes of reading. Coaxing students to read, or go over to the classroom book shelf to find a book.
“You like sports books right?” Miller asks a student. “Have you read this one?”
Then to another student, “This one’s really funny, you should try reading it.”
This is how Miller begins her day.
After student teaching in Jeremy Corey-Gruenes’s Humanities 11 English class for the first part of the year and graduating in December, Miller is back. After about a month of applying to be a sub and for different positions, she heard about an opening at ALHS from another teacher. She applied and is now the long term sub for Sean Gillam’s English 9 and 10 classes.
As the students read, Miller sits at her desk, usually reading her own book to set an example for her students. She believes if she is asking them to read, she should be reading too. She thinks it is a good way to start the class, settling them down from being in the hallways in passing time. It is time for them to find some focus and start the lesson.
“OK, you can put your books away,” Miller announces as the fifteen minutes ends.
She begins passing out papers and introducing the lesson: Effective introductions and conclusions for essays. She talks about her experiences writing in college, classes students may take in the future, how learning the key components of introductions will help them in the future. She begins to go deeper into these components. However, she uses a not so typical approach.
“So you all know how I love Christian Bale, from Batman right?” Miller says.
It has the desired effect, the students respond, engaged. Miller finds an approach like this effective, her students being able to relate to her because she references things many are also interested in. How does this relate to the lesson? Using Bale as an example, Miller would be able to show why the topic is important to her because she can relate to it. She uses this approach because if the students can relate to her examples, they may grasp the concept better.
She gives the class the assignment and starts walking around the class, kneeling down by desks checking the students’ progress.
“How are you doing? How are you grabbing my attention with your intro?” Miller asks one student.
“Slapping you,” the student replies.
“Ok think about slapping your reader with your words,” Miller says, turning the student’s statement around. The student is still right, but not in the way they first thought.
At another desk, Miller reads a student’s work. She smiles as she finishes reading.
“That’s good,” she says. “That’s very good.”
It’s a good feeling for Miller to know her lesson worked. When planning lessons, it’s hard knowing if the students will understand what you are trying to teach. For Miller, it’s nice to know she is doing her job and she feels good. She never thought she would return to ALHS and is not sure how long she’ll be here. It was a weird adjustment to make, rather than seeing her former teachers as her teachers, she now looks at them as colleagues. She is making the adjustment though, learning new things as she goes, working with a staff she loves to work with. While she would like to experience a new place and new people, she would also like staying at ALHS where she knows the ins and outs of the school.
One minute left and a pile by the door starts to form.
“Are you guys that excited to leave my room?” Miller asks jokingly. “Go sit somewhere.”
The students proceed to sit on the desks. Miller rolls her eyes.
“You guys are lame,” she says.
A student pipes up, “Be more specific next time.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
The bell rings and they’re out, Miller still smiling at the last comment made by her student.