Grading papers, constantly listening to teens, creating lessons and balancing home life with work life, is a day to day occurance of a high school social studies teacher. Mrs. George, a teacher at Elk Mound High School, is one of the most hard working teachers I have ever met. She creates hands-on lessons for all her students, creates good relationships with them, and loves everything she does. She also has 6 kids, lives 40 minutes away from work, and brings in most of the income for her family.
While in Junior high, Mrs. George began to figure out what she wanted to do with the rest of her life.
“Junior high was a very defining time of my life,” she stated. “A few of my teachers saw character traits in me that I had never seen in myself. They gave me opportunities to develop as a leader. They believed in me. It was then that I decided I wanted to be a teacher. I want to believe in people the same way that they believed in me.”
She then went to college to follow her heart to become a teacher. Along the journey, Mrs. George found a couple of classes that she enjoyed and this made her consider changing her major. However, she stuck with teaching as her forever career.
“I never lost my vision,” she stated. “There was a time when I took a class in communications, and it almost made me change my major to speech communications, but in the end, I wanted to make a difference as a teacher.”
She soon got her first teaching job. On her first day, Mrs. George really felt the pressure of being a teacher. She felt like she needed to know everything about social studies and how to handle every situation that could occur. Even though she had a stressful start to her teaching career, she then realized how much she loved it.
“It was all nerve racking and exciting at the same time,” Mrs. George explained. “I was just so excited to make a difference that the stressful start didn’t hurt me any.”
Mrs. George still goes through many challenging situations to this day. She has to deal with students no matter how they are feeling, happy or sad. Most of the time, when the students aren't having a good day, it tends to make her job a lot harder. This makes teaching not so enjoyable for her and impacts the other students in class.
“Teaching really does wear on my soul. It is exhausting at times,” Mrs. George said. “A few students can change the atmosphere of the classroom for the whole day.”
When situations are a really big challenge, she likes to talk with her students about it. Mrs. George responds to this by having a heart to heart conversation with them. This not only helps that student, but it’s helps the whole class to feel more comfortable with her.
“Different students act out for different reasons. I like to make sure the whole class is on my team at all times,” She stated. “I had a class last year that was probably the hardest class I have dealt with. They just drained everything out of me. I finally had enough of it, so I wrote down some notes of what I was going to share with them. I had a heart to heart conversation with the entire class, and just like that the whole year changed for that class.”
Mrs. George goes from school to her kids at home. She really tries to spend as much time with her kids, because her kids are her number one priority. She works so hard on her students and their success, so she wants to do the same for her children.
“After starting my family, I soon realized my kids only have one mom, and my students have multiple teachers. I decided that I would choose to be content with being a good teacher, so I can be the best mom I could be to my children,” Jenn stated. “Some seasons are harder than others. Getting in final grades, the start of a new quarter, and grading large projects are the hardest times balancing work with my family, but that is only a couple times out of the year.”
Mrs. George is happy with were she is at in her life. She has a great job and has a wonderful family that she comes home to every night.
“I am so lucky to have such a great job,” Mrs. George explained. “I have great coworkers, I love the district I work for, and I love that I get to talk about social studies a daily basis.”