Schools have re-opened and students flocked to classrooms again, some very excited, some grudgingly, many looking forward to reuniting with friends.
This is the beginning of another season of learning, but not for students only.
Experienced teachers acknowledge that in the process of becoming seasoned educators, they learn a lot from their students, maybe not in terms of knowledge, but in terms of reasoning, behaviour and communication, and if nothing else, they learn how to teach better every year.
And in this school year, many brand new teachers, fresh from grad ceremonies, will start to go through the dual process of learning while teaching.
One such fresh teacher at the Wm. E Hay High School is Hayley Leschert.
Originally from South Africa, and living in Edmonton with her family since 1996, Leschert says she had been eyeing a position with the Clearview School Division ever since she got married to a Stettler lad, himself a graduate of Wm. E Hay.
“We had our eye on Clearview for a while, because we knew he was going to return to Stettler,” said Leschert in reference to her husband’s forthcoming employment with a local business.
“So any jobs that came up at Clearview, I applied for and I had had my final teaching practicum at Wm. E. Hay and I really liked the school.”
Leschert says teaching English and literature to grades 9 to 11, her greatest challenge will be “getting on top of the curriculum, figuring out what I need to be teaching and be organized with that.”
She believes, as a first- year teacher, she will be spending a lot of time preparing for her classes until she gets “into the groove.”