This fall, I will attend Providence College with a degree in Secondary Education and History. There, I will aim to fulfill my dream of becoming a US History teacher. I want to help brighten kids’ days, make them feel welcomed and accepted, and teach them about their past.
Teaching is a profession that has been of vital importance to furthering humanity since we have had the ability to speak. Teachers are often underappreciated and underpaid. Yet, this does not stop quite a few people from wanting to become teachers. Some want to teach because they are passionate about educating others on a subject they love, and others want to teach because they were inspired to do so by a teacher. Our educators can take up more than just educational roles; they can be father figures, coaches, and even best friends.
However, in recent history, the teaching profession has become one that is less desirable, and sometimes even looked down upon. This is largely due to being underpaid and having a lack of resources from taxpayer dollars. This usually leads to teacher union strikes, such as the one we had in Malden in 2022.
Despite this, we need teachers; they are a necessary profession for educating our future generations, and we would go nowhere without them. Luckily, at Malden High, we have many educators who have stepped up and pursued this profession because of their love for what they do.
Here are some Malden High teachers weighing in on why they chose the profession.
Elizabeth Klayman – ELA & Special Education Teacher:
“I had a few teachers along the way whom I vowed to be unlike and slightly better than, if and when I became a teacher. Somehow, I made a pact with myself that I would try to be the best teacher to everyone as much as possible. Albeit, that’s hard, and not everyone lines up like that. You can have all the right players on the field and still lose a game. But when I show up to be the teacher, it’s because I remember what it felt like to be the one in 1st grade sent to the Principal’s Office for talking too much, and that teacher never called my parents to try to help me either—my parents did not like that teacher as a result. Or, I remember what it felt like to be a helpful person, maybe helping too much and getting nasty looks from my 5th-grade teacher. Or, I remember how my Senior year English teacher asked us to go around and share what our plans were for after high school and I said, ‘I’m going to college to become a teacher’ and he said in front of the whole class that I wouldn’t make a good teacher, despite the skills I already had from babysitting. I realized that something was wrong with his actions and that teachers are meant to be people who believe in their students, who value and try to understand them, and never give up—not on themselves and certainly not on anyone else, nor the system.”
Courtney Braz – History Teacher
“I fell in love with history before I fell in love with the idea of teaching. So, when I was a kid, I wanted to be an archaeologist because I loved dinosaurs, but that just fell apart. When I got to eighth grade, we learned about civics, but we mostly spent the whole year learning about the American Revolution. It just really caught my attention, and it stuck with me. I would start buying books about things that I couldn’t even read. I just bought them because I was interested, and it just kind of grew from there. I loved my history teachers in high school. Stuff that I learned in my AP European history class, I still know and teach from that knowledge I got 10 years ago. When I got to sophomore and junior year of high school, I was debating whether or not I wanted to be a journalist or a teacher. I had said, ‘Oh, I want to be a teacher,’ and all of my teachers were like, ‘Duh, yeah.’ And I was like, ‘What do you mean? Duh?,’ and they just said, ‘This is what you’re kind of made for.’ Once I got into a classroom, I actually was [Jonathan] Copithorne’s student teacher, and I was able to see how he taught, and I thought that this is how I would want to teach. I was like, ‘Oh, this is kind of what I was meant to do.’ I always had really positive feedback. I think I’m good at it; I’ve been told that I can mesh well in a classroom. But yeah, that’s kind of how I got here, and once I was in a classroom, it confirmed everything for me.”
Yahiria Marquez – English Teacher:
“I grew up in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and my neighborhood was diverse, not as diverse as Malden, but diverse in that there were a lot of Latino and Black families, among other races as well. But opportunities weren’t running rampant. I remember…thinking there’s got to be something more, and I just thought, I want to make a difference. I want to show students who are in similar situations or communities that the world is so much bigger, and what you can do doesn’t have to end here. Just because this is what you’re seeing doesn’t mean that your life has to be limited in that way. That was the main reason that I wanted to go into teaching, because I had some amazing teachers who made me feel like I could do whatever I wanted, and having someone like that as a teacher, especially in your formative years, can make all the difference. It can make you feel like ‘oh wow, there is so much out there!’ I remember I went to the Adirondacks with a teacher on a trip. I was like, ‘Whoa, I have never been to the woods.’ I saw my first Broadway show because of a teacher who had taken me. And I thought, ‘This is amazing!’ It just opened my eyes and my world, and I wanted to do the same.“
Nierika Nims – ELA Teacher
“I think it’s the best job in the world, despite all the stuff that we have to deal with. I love working with young people. I love learning from them, and I think it’s a really important way to help set people up for their lives.”
Kurtis Scheer – History Teacher
“Well, a few things, like having a really good history teacher in high school, certainly attracted me to this profession. My love and interest in my content area is definitely one of the big driving factors; working with young people, obviously, is a big driving force here. I was always really excited to share what I like about history, and use that to inspire other people to, maybe not necessarily be history teachers, but to inspire them to do whatever is interesting to them. That’s what kind of drew me into the profession. And you know, as somebody who tried a bunch of other things before becoming a teacher, from a trade to an office job to a seasonal worker in different industries, I kind of got a chance to step my foot into a bunch of different things. And, I landed on teaching, being the one that kind of brought everything together that I like most.”
Overall, everyone’s path to teaching ends up being different, yet they all end up coming to the same goal: to educate, inspire, and empower our future generations.
