Some family history has helped a pair of teachers in their first year on the job.
Megan Skory, a science teacher at Foothills Composite High School and Khatrina Baxter, a Grade 3 French Immersion at École Good Shepherd School, were their school divisions’ representatives for the Edwin Parr awards, which recognizes excellence in first-year teaching.
Skory has a younger sister Stephanie, who teaches at Big Rock School and her mother Jen has worked with the Foothills School Division for several years.
“It has been fun to go through this first year of teaching together (with Stephanie),” Megan said. “I think that our parents and coaches throughout school really helped us to see the importance of giving back to the community as some of my favourite memories as a kid and teenager come from school or school sports.”
Megan attended Cayley School from Kindergarten to Grade 8 before moving on to Highwood High School in High River in Grade 9. It was while a senior at Highwood she got the idea of teaching.
“I started to take on some math and science tutoring for Grade 9 and 10 students at Highwood,” she said. “This was where my passion for math and science teaching was ignited. I loved to see the light-bulb go off for a student when they understood a concept they didn’t understand before.”
Now she’s turning on that light for Foothills Comp students.
“Becoming a Falcon has been absolutely amazing,” she said. “I was already familiar with some of the teachers in the school as I did my second-teaching practicum at the Comp but all of the teachers and staff I didn’t know have been so welcoming and supportive, especially all my colleagues who teach in the Science department with me.”
She’s been mentored by award-winning science teacher, Jayni Caldwell, at the Comp.
“That has been very special for me as a first year teacher as I have gained all these tried and tested lessons from a teacher who has taught for 20-plus years,” Megan said.
She was fortunate enough to go back to her alma mater, Cayley School, for her practicum, but found out things are a bit different when you’re doing the job for real.
“What you don’t see as a practicum teacher is the behind-the-scenes paperwork and meetings and parent conferences that all contribute to student success,” she said. “So it was definitely a struggle to learn how to juggle this workload as well as coaching volleyball at the same time.”
Skory is the junior varsity girls volleyball coach at the Comp as well.
She’s also learned that having a snack or two on hand isn’t a bad idea either.
“In case any of your students forget to pack a lunch, especially with teenagers, you should have snacks for them because they can sure get hangry (“hungry and angry”). It always reminds me of the Snickers commercials,” she said. “As a biology teacher, dissections are part our curriculum and so there could be students who pass out during the dissections so that extra burst of food and sugar helps them recover — which is something I just experienced this semester.”
Small classroom
There can be benefits to having to work in close quarters – even for a first-year teacher.
Khatrina Baxter’s first classroom in her career was the Good Shepherd School library for the first couple of weeks as she and her students waited for portable classrooms to be completed.
“It ended up being a really good learning experience because I got to work very closely with Brittany Hachey (a fellow Grade 3 FI teacher),” Baxter said. “Now we’re right next door in these beautiful portables.”
Baxter said teaching French Immersion at the elementary level is a perfect fit for her.
“I find the children still have a lot of natural curiosity and they want to learn,” Baxter said. “In French Immersion, they are still excited about learning French and there are a lot of really fun ways to go about it with that age group.”
She went through French Immersion from Kindergarten to Grade 12 in Ottawa and then continued with the program when she went to the University of Ottawa. She got her education degree from St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia.
She has learned a lot in her profession over the past school year.
“Classroom management has been different — a one-size fits all model doesn’t really work,” Baxter said. “You have to really get to know your students to know what is going to work for each of them in terms of learning… That is something I am still learning.”
Her most important mentor is her mother.
“My mom taught Grade 3 before retiring last year,” she said.
“I saw that work comes home a lot. You go in early, you stay late and there are often things to do at home as well.
“My mom got me braced for that so I was kind of ready.”
