In March, Mississippi School for Math and Science teacher Chuck Yarborough received an email from a former student named Owen Phillips.
“You might not remember me,” the email began, “but I took a few of your classes during my time at MSMS…I’m reaching out to you because I now work on the Education Desk at NPR. I have so many great memories from my time in Tales (from the Crypt) and I’d love to do a story on the program.”
At the time, Yarborough, who remembered Phillips, was less than a month away from putting on this year’s Tales from the Crypt, which his junior U.S. history students perform for visitors at Friendship Cemetery every year. Yarborough gave Phillips a call.
Phillips told Yarborough about a series NPR is doing called 50 Great Teachers. For the series, NPR aims to find 50 teachers and tell their stories, all while discussing what it means to be a great teacher. The series, which began this year, has covered Socrates, Booker T. Washington and more. NPR reporters have also traveled the country covering educators making a difference in students’ lives.
When Phillips thought of great teachers, he thought of Yarborough.
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Yarborough was in the middle of working with his students to put together this year’s Tales from the Crypt when another reporter from the NPR Education desk visited Columbus at the beginning of April to cover Yarborough for 50 Great Teachers.
The reporter, Elissa Nadworny, sat in on four of Yarborough’s classes her first day in town. Later. Nadworny accompanied Yarborough to Friendship Cemetery.
Yarborough, in an interview with The Dispatch recently, remembered talking to Nadworny about what makes great teachers.
“First of all, I don’t consider myself a great teacher,” he said. “I consider myself a teacher who’s trying to be great. And I think that’s what we all do. We try to be great at whatever we do.”
Nadworny questioned him about Tales from the Crypt and asked about the classes he was teaching on the Cold War. Yarborough’s students had spent the day in class studying documents related to the Korean War.
“In history, good teachers are engaging students as history detectives,” Yarborough said.
For Yarborough, history is not about memorizing dates. He likes his students to look at documents, use them to paint a picture of what was going on in the time period and draw their own conclusions.
“My job is to create an environment where you want to learn,” he said.
Yarborough said the attention he’s gotten from NPR is flattering, but sometimes he thinks he gets too much credit for what the students do.
“I know what it takes for the students to put this together,” he said.
When more on NPR’s 50 Great Teachers series, visit npr.org/series/359618671/50-great-teachers
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