A Columbus teacher was among five inducted into the Mississippi Hall of Master Teachers at Mississippi University for Women Friday.
Dennis Reed teaches physics and chemistry at the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science. He is national board certified and a 22-year veteran of the classroom.
Reed wrote of his experiences, “Teaching requires that I must evaluate myself with reflection to see that I am facilitating the learning process of the students and maintaining practices that enhance their success.”
“Mr. Reed is the kind of teacher every parent desires for their child, in every subject: caring, proactive, confident, dependable, creative, firm, and knowledgeable,” a parent wrote of Reed’s classroom performance.
The other inductees were Kimberly C. Fandel from Carver Elementary School in Tupelo, Verniece Goode from Maddox Elementary School in Laurel, Ann Lathrop from Bay High School in Bay St. Louis, and Suzie Welch from Oak Grove High School in Purvis.
They joined 115 members who have been inducted since the hall was founded in 1991. The induction was part of a daylong celebration of teaching on campus.
“Learning is a journey that never ends,” Interim MUW President Allegra Brigham told the luncheon gathering. She was, literally, preaching to the choir as members of The W’s education faculty, first-year teachers, intern teachers, hall members and hall inductees sat around tables to hear from Michelle Shearer, the 2011 National Teacher of the Year.
Shearer teaches advanced placement chemistry classes at Urbana High School in Frederick County, Md. “Students don’t just run to AP chemistry,” she said, and the audience laughed.
Teaching is hard, she added, but her classroom is the air she breathes, and all students are “my kids.”
As a national representative for teaching and education, Shearer said she is often asked these three questions: What’s the secret (to good teaching)? Why can’t we fix our schools? If you had a magic wand …
Shearer didn’t attempt to answer them, but she did answer the most recent question asked of her: Why do you care about the education of young children?
“I started thinking about everybody else’s kids,” she said. Every teacher, every person should want for all children what they want for their own. “Everything that we teach our children helps us make them who they are.”
Teachers at every grade who do their jobs make her able to do her job, she said. She depends on each level of education to prepare her students to take on AP chemistry. And she depends on parents.
The success of children depends on people who care, she said. Parents who are intimidated by chemistry frequently tell her they can’t help their children with homework.
“I don’t need you to teach chemistry,” she said is her answer. “I need you to be interested.”
Shearer said she is an unapologetic teacher who fought prejudice, sometimes within her own family, about her career goal. She tried pre-medicine, but students at a deaf school near Princeton University, where she got her degree, pulled her back from the medical field. “I was born to be a teacher.”
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