By Mr. Brandon Hillman, Teacher at South Orange Middle School

“A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.”

— Thomas Carruthers

SOMA (or MAPSO if that’s your cup of tea) really cares about its students. That much was apparent on social media during the school's “off-season”. The pandemic saw schools close their doors early in March of 2020, and no one knew what the following school year would look like. Many people had a lot of different ideas for how the district should best move forward and navigate these unprecedented times, but at the heart of each argument was the well being of the students. 

As a teacher in the district, I too had my own ideas about what the year should look like for the district, and often found myself engrossed in the online debates that were raging. However, at some point I took a step back and realized, it didn’t matter what the district did. Come September, I needed to be ready to welcome new students to my “classroom”. There was so much focus on where the classrooms would be, but not as much focus on what would happen/be taught in those classrooms. As a teacher I had a decision to make. Do I focus solely on academics to make up for the “lost year”? A term that I was seeing thrown around more and more. Or do I focus on the students mental well being, and give them the opportunity to adjust to and thrive in their new reality. These questions led me to what I learned through the pandemic, which is that academics does not need to be the driving force of education!

I have always been a teacher that had a reputation for being able to easily create positive relationships with my students. I often found myself using the last few minutes of class to listen to music and have casual conversations with my students about whatever was on their minds. This year, I decided that I would flip the way my classroom was run and start off with the conversations, instead of ending with it. This seemed like such a small thing, but I can honestly say it has made a huge difference. Instead of the students coming into class and getting right into the thick of the lesson they would be eased in. 

I found that giving the students that transition time not only helped them be prepared to learn when it was time to start the lesson, but it also helped create an amazing classroom community. We would often have“fights” with each other over the right way to make hot chocolate, favorite tv shows, or our inner Powerpuff Girl, which would sometimes take up a majority of the period. It was hard, at first, not teaching “bell to bell”, but after seeing how much the students needed and appreciated the social outlet they were given, it got much easier for me to relinquish “my” time for them.

This is not to say that I stopped teaching all together in exchange for a free-for-all. In fact, we were able to make through the entire curriculum this year, and I saw marked improvement among my students, in regards to their reading and writing. This pandemic, however, has shown me that it is ok to not hyper focus on academics. By focusing instead on students' socio-emotional needs, even just for the first few minutes of class, a positive environment is created that allows for the students to be successful and more importantly themselves.