10/21/2015 by Carney Sandoe Staff |
Teachers Who Rock
A Day in the Life of a Boarding School Teacher
Our first-ever faculty hiring conference specifically for boarding schools is just six weeks away.
If you are interested in working at a boarding school, CS&A @ TABS is an event you won’t want to miss.
Not sure what life is actually like as a boarding school faculty member? Check out this series over the next six weeks to hear from real candidates we’ve recently placed in boarding schools across the country. First up: Raegan Russell, a humanities teacher at Culver Academies in Indiana.
Name:
Raegan Russell
Where do you teach?
At Culver Academies in Indiana.
What do you do there (i.e., what subject do you teach, what sport do you coach, do you live in a dorm or supervise a club, etc.)?
I teach ninth grade humanities and work in the girls’ dorms.
What is a typical day like for you?
I get to my office early each morning so that I can review my lesson plan and check my notes from the day before. At Culver, we emphasize teaching students about their own learning process, so I keep careful track of my students’ study habits and classroom behaviors. Often, I spend some of my morning giving my freshmen feedback in their online notebooks, so that they can use the feedback later during class. Since I only have 30 students, I have plenty of time to provide meaningful commentary on both process and product.
Our classes begin at 8:30. We often start class by talking about our weekends or evenings. Culver’s intentional student life program emphasizes leadership for personal and academic success. Often, the activities planned by student life set my students up for excellent comparative discussions about Culver’s values and culture versus the values and cultures of the ancient civilizations we study. After our intro, we might analyze a painting together, watch a short video highlighting the details of a famous piece of architecture, read a primary document about a culture’s ideals, and spend some time having a Harkness discussion that ties everything together.
Two of the four 80-minute periods each day are planning periods, so I can easily collaborate with colleagues, observe classes in other departments, or work with students. I often stop by the student-run campus coffee shop to grab a drink; I run into my students there and we chat about what’s happening in their other classes, sports, or extracurriculars. Once a week, I meet with the ninth grade team to discuss major assessments and to talk about the best way to present complex historical ideas to ninth graders. My team has an easygoing, collegial, yet very professional working relationship; I count myself lucky to get to discuss history, literature, and teaching with them on a weekly basis!
When the class day is done, we have Mid-Afternoon break; students often stop by my office to talk more about what we’re studying, to ask for more feedback, or just to chat about the day.
One or two nights a week, I report to one of the two girls’ dorms in which I work. Since Culver has a robust prefect system, my role in the dorm is primarily to guide the prefects in making sure the dorm runs smoothly. The girls take their jobs seriously, accounting for the whereabouts for each student and making sure that everything stays quiet during study hall. Since we work in the same dorms all year, we have a chance to get to know students that we don’t teach. During evening supervision, I might help a senior with a college essay, talk with a group of juniors about how to read film, or discuss the difficulties of performing a dance on a football field instead of indoors.
Culver has faculty and staff meetings on Wednesdays while the students work on leadership training. On a typical Wednesday, I might meet with colleagues to discuss the school’s values in the morning and attend a full faculty meeting in the afternoon. Wednesday afternoons are also our time for meeting with mentees, chatting over snacks about their successes and disappointments.
Is this your first time working in a boarding school?
I lived in a dorm at a five-day boarding school before coming to Culver.
What drew you to a boarding environment?
The emphasis on community for both students and teachers. Everyone at a boarding school feels as though they’re part of something bigger than themselves!
What is your favorite place on your school’s campus?
This probably isn’t a surprising answer coming from a Humanities teacher, but I’d have to say that I love our library most of all! The back wall of the library is almost entirely glass, and the windows overlook Lake Max. Whole classes and individual students flock to the library to work, and I enjoy seeing my colleagues’ classes in action.
What advice would you give to candidates hoping to work in a boarding school?
Practice being flexible and adventurous—and get ready to laugh a lot! On Monday morning, you might do a very serious study of ancient Greek architecture in a classroom, but on Monday night, you might be supervising students running around in human-sized hamster balls. Your walk to lunch may be uneventful, or you may be passed by someone wearing a chicken suit—you just never know!
Lucy 3/23/2019 at 1:47am
Thank you for your sharing. I got a great vision to be a teacher in a boarding school.