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Spencer Neiderlander– Special Education Instructor within the History Department
If you weren't in education, what would you be doing instead? If not in education, I want to have some sort of conservation job. I would love to have the opportunity to work with nature and preserve areas or redevelop areas for future generations to visit and get to experience, or with animals to rehabilitate and release back to their natural habitat. I also like to poke the idea of getting a large piece of land and starting a large scale animal rescue with a variety of different animals who either could not find a home or who were abandoned and give them a better life then they had.
If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go? If I were able to travel anywhere, the non-crazy answer would be Switzerland, Iceland, or China, because from what I have seen, the views are amazing, and I would like to experience some of those natural events for myself. The crazy answer would be visiting an abandoned town or city like Chernobyl. There is something strange, confusing, and fascinating knowing that at one point in time the given area was active and alive, but now time has frozen, and you can get a sort of glimpse into what life was like during that time period when everything fell apart.
What's one thing you hope students take away from your class or role? The one thing I hope students take away from my history classes is never "can you circle an answer correctly on a test or quiz," but "can you explain your knowledge of the given subject in a way that makes sense to you," or "can you take this situation and adapt it to what you are strong in." Education is a learning experience, and what is learning if you don't mess up every now and then, right?
I remember two students who are graduating this year, back when they were Freshmen. Student 1, on their first writing test, dedicated so much time to prepare, and the end result wasn't where they wanted it to be. Rather than be defeated and give up, although they were incredibly frustrated, we worked together to figure out a better way to access the information, create a study guide and organizer that worked for them, and retried the writing part, where the grade improved from a 65% to a 95%. For pretty much the rest of that year, this student would absolutely crush any test or writing assignment because they developed a system that worked.
The second student, who came in a bit later, wanted to make connections to the content but expressed that they were not strong in memorizing information or writing. We adjusted the information to be more like a story where one thing connects to another and sprinkled in fancy vocabulary to help expose them to academic terms. When given the writing opportunity, this student would freeze when given this graphic organizer, but could talk you through the thought process with almost no guidance. We let them speak their ideas aloud, I would write down what they say and they would copy it after we got through it all. After a few times, the student was much more comfortable with figuring out what they needed in each section and only needed us to review and see if anything else needed to be added or taken out.
Both of these students have been outstanding since departing our (teamed history) class, not because they are the best at circling an answer or can give the basic requirements, but because they wanted to figure out a system to break the system and make education worthwhile. It allowed them to see opportunities that are non-preferred as a challenge to push through and made them outstanding members of the Marshall Community.
If you could give one piece of advice to Marshall's parents, what would it be? My advice to a parent is to ask all the questions. Ones you know the answers to, ones you think you know the answers to, and ones you are not sure about. If you aren't sure what questions to ask, find a parent who has a student coming to Marshall and see what their experience is so far. See if they have a teacher they have had a good experience with and connect with them. Just because we may not teach your child doesn't mean the end goal isn't the same. As teachers, we want your student to be as successful as you want your student to be and it's difficult to reach a common goal if everyone is on different pages. Come to back to school night if you can and ask questions, send an email, use TalkingPoints, we would much rather be in communication with you than have everything be a big surprise when it's too late.
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