Interview with New 8th Grade English Teacher - Ms. Riley

By: Anna Bennett

Tara Riley became an addition to the Middle School Staff this year, taking the position of GM's 8th Grade ELA teacher. She has her certification to teach English at middle and high school grades. She is quite an experienced educator, and she has previously taught middle school students in Connecticut for 12 years. Ms. Riley has three children, two girls and a son, in grades 6th, 4th, and 2nd. 

Although Tara Riley grew up in Conneticut she had been coming to Vermont to vacation, ever since she was a little girl, up until she moved to Jamaica, VT during COVID. One of her closest childhood friends had an uncle who lived right on Main Street in Chester. Even back then, she said she loved the town of Chester and really enjoyed being in VT. She even remembers CAES’ beloved wooden playground and says she spent hours playing on it with her friend. When she was 21, she went on a solo camping trip with her dogs to Jamaica State Park for the first time, and now it is one of her favorite places. During COVID, her family visited the park often, and one of their favorite stops was the Jamaica Country Store. While on one of their vacations, they discovered that the store was for sale. Ms. Riley says that they had no original intention to buy it, but they ended up doing so. Within 3 months of finding out the store was for sale, they had bought a house and moved up to VT. She left her job in CT and was nervous and excited to have a whole new beginning in VT. 

One of Ms. Riley's personal interests is art, especially drawing and painting. Growing up, she loved watching Bob Ross. “Moving up here all the sudden, I had landscapes everywhere.” The store has been a way to sell her art, which she says has been “awesome and completely unexpected.” She says her dream would be to make a job out of that. 

I asked Ms. Riley what her favorite part of her job is, and she said the students. She says the random things middle schoolers say and do make her laugh. She enjoys getting to know them better every day and seeing them grow from their young, immature selves at the beginning of the year to almost high schoolers in the spring. She likes that because GM has a combined middle school and high school, she will be able to keep in touch with students and see them graduate. 

She believes she has a tough job because most kids are against school, especially reading. She loves it when students are able to analyze literature instead of just reading it. She remembers when she started to read with an analytical perspective. She admits that she expects a lot from her students because she wants to push them to be their best. Besides teaching them reading and writing skills, she believes it is important that they learn life skills in middle school. She believes that the younger you understand how to build resilience and be independent, the better off you will be. It’s incredibly important for teenagers to understand the impact of their choices and learn from their life experience instead of getting stuck in whatever their trauma is. 

Ms Riley didn’t always plan on being a teacher. As a teenager, she says she didn’t care about school and was “okay with getting Cs”. She took a philosophy course as a high school sophomore, and it was the first class besides art that she really enjoyed, which made her start to engage in school. It introduced her to thinking about religion differently, being able to question it, and it got her to really think about her personal morals. 

For college, she ended up at the University of Rhode Island as a fashion major. But she really didn’t enjoy it, and so when she needed to pick a new major, she thought about that philosophy class that she had taken in high school and ended up going to school for that. After shifting her major, she loved the classes she was taking and loved being a student. After graduating, she didn’t pursue a career with her degree, so she went back to the industry she grew up in, which was food and hospitality. At 22, she was working 80 hr weeks as a restaurant manager and making a poor salary, and realized that wasn’t the life she wanted. When she thought about teaching, she decided it would be a good fit for her. Now she says, “I think I like being a teacher because I loved being a student.” Warmest welcome to Ms. Riley, GM is happy to have her!