Amine Yakine has been a new teach at Malden High since the beginning of the year of 2019.
This school year, there have been many hiries for numerous positions, one of which being the new history teacher, Amine Yakine.
There were many teachers who applied for the position, for Christopher Mastrangelo, the principal of the Malden High School, there were many strong applicants, but ultimately, it came down to Yakine’s experience in an urban school system.
Yakine had previously taught in a Salem Middle School. Coming to Malden High, Yakine had wanted to “teach in a community with similar background as [his], ethnically and culturally diverse and open with like-minded public servants and educators, for the community and being part of the community in order to transform and create a better human condition for a community that really needs that kind of effort.” Additionally, Yakine had wanted to work and teach in a community that was very similar to the one where he grew up in as a immigrant. Building his career in a urban education system, Yakine believes that “urban education is essential to the future and preservation of the promise of quality public education.”
As a child, Yakine had “always loved school and the happiest times of [his] life [were his] university years.” His past experiences with a traditional education and the inspiration that he received from his educators have eventually led Yakine to become a teacher. “It was natural for [him] to do well in school because that is in [his] nature and who [he] am,” continuing that believes himself as a “lifelong learner, academic and a humanist.” This feeling that Yakine felt towards education eventually led him to become a teacher.
In turning his love of school to his profession, he took “Confucius’s advice to heart, ‘Do what you love and you will never work a day in life’,” he said. Yakine hopes to inspire his students to chase after their dreams just as his teachers inspired him. With this, Yakine hopes to “enrich, impact, inspire, connect with all [his] students if possible and plant seeds of critical thinking and love for learning in [his students] for eternity.”
For freshman Mayahuel Morse, who is in Yakine’s US History Class, felt like he is “one of [her] awesome teachers who was really cool and cared about the subject and went deeper than the standard curriculum about it.” For freshman Alain Joseph, “he doesn’t talk down to [his students]” but “[students do] have to know current events and a basic understanding of history” to understand what he is talking about.
Yakine runs a discussion based classroom. For Morse, it was “very stimulating” as many of the Do-Nows were turn and talk. As Joseph puts it “he wants to show people that one; the world is not [as] grey and black as people see every day, and two; [Joseph feels] like he truly tries to teach [his students about] things about the world at the moment and things that [everyone] should be concerned about, and be looking into.”
With Yakines’s hopes of becoming the top of the standard for educators and teachers, he hopes that he can benefit Malden High with his past experiences and show his students that the world is not as monochrome as it seems.
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