Hackettstown High School

Education is the foundation of tomorrow, it is ongoing and never ending.  We are always learning, an endeavor that we undertake from our first breath to our last exhale.  It occurs whether we are conscious of it or not.  I believe all of us have the capacity to learn, create, and become something more than we are at the present.  It is because of this belief that I have pursued the life defining task of an educator.  Teaching is not a job that begins and ends in the same day.  It is a lifestyle that fits into the construct of what we call an occupation. 

                As a member of this lifestyle, I believe there is no limit to what children can achieve.  I have struggled with a learning disability throughout my education and have persevered.  I have done so on my own merit as well as from guiding hands of those few educators who showed, that they cared.  As a teacher you are so much more than a bearer of knowledge.  You are someone’s inspiration, one that may never be made known to you, yet one all the same. 

                Education is not a discipline confined to one subject, but a multitude of themes and ideas strung together to illustrate the world in which we interact with daily.  It is complex and diverse. Education is not the explanation of the world but rather the introduction to it.  As teachers we must transform the unobtainable into the tangible.  This must be done by exhausting every resource available to us in order to gain the interest of a child and cause them to explore the relevant.

 Our curriculum must be related to the relevance of today.  As a social studies teacher I can find the relevance in almost anything and bring that out as a point of reference for student engagement. Our society is complex and extremely versatile.  There are many long standing legacies still relevant from days long since passed as well as new ones forming throughout the passing days of the present.  The seven disciplines of social studies tie together to form a blueprint of today that must be pieced together, and constructed by the students.  It is our job to supply them with the pieces.  Every student can achieve the finished result although that final product will vary to each and every child.  Their foundation will in turn begin the events of tomorrow. 

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