The summertime life of teachers

Liberty teacher Michelle Breeden explored academic and historic sites in Chicago, including the Chicago History Museum.

BY ANNA DURRETT / REPORTER

If you think teachers enjoy summers that are no work and all play, you’ve miscalculated.

This summer is especially busy for teachers. “I moved my entire classroom,” said Jane Haithcock, an English teacher at Liberty Middle School. Fueled by the opening of James Clemons High School and the ninth grade being moved to the high schools, droves of teachers are in the process of changing classrooms, and even schools.

Haithcock has already attended a few teacher conferences this summer, including one at Alabama A&M University and another in Homewood, Ala. Haithcock said the purpose of the conference at A&M was “to talk about new English language course of study. We’re moving from where it was just Alabama state standards to now national standards or common core.”

Homewood hosted a middle school summit. “A bunch of different middle schools from Alabama came to share best practices … we learned lots of good ideas and new ideas for collaboration,” said Haithcock.

Haithcock and Ambra Johnson, who is also an English teacher at Liberty, are taking classes to earn educational specialist degrees. Haithcock said, “After your masters you do about two and a half years coursework to get your Ed.S., educational specialist, then after that if you wanted to continue with your educational doctorate, your Ed.D., or your Ph.D., you usually only have two or three years because you╒ve already taken some of your courses.”

Liberty history teacher Michelle Breeden visited Chicago this summer for what she calls a “boot camp.” Breeden said, “I’m part of TAH, which is a Teaching American History grant program. We have 30 teachers in North Alabama. This is our fourth year together. For the whole year we seek out historians and professionals from universities to intensely train us and get us into the curriculum to help better us as an individual. In the summer we go on what we call boot camp where we go to a location in the United States that fits our topic. This year’s topic was from the 1890s until the end of World War I.”

Breeden and the other TAH teachers visited historic and academic sites in Chicago, including the Hull-House, the Robie House, the Chicago History Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Illinois Holocaust Museum, the Museum of Industry and Technology, Wrigley Field, Pritzker Military Library and the Museum of Contemporary Photography.

Another change for teachers this summer was Liberty naming a new principal, Nelson Brown, who previously was the principal of Columbia Elementary. “I taught his son when in eight grade, and he was a wonderful young man,” Haithcock said. “I’m assuming if he was a good parent, he’ll be a good principal. I’m looking forward to working with him.”