I was asked to interview someone important and inspiring to me and I immediately thought of my 8th grade math teacher Ms. Boritz. She had left such a big impact on my life moving forward to high school and I couldn’t think of anyone more inspirational than her.
I asked Ms. Boritz a few questions about her as a teacher and how she builds that connection and trust with her students, starting off with what her most defining moments are. She had said that most of them start with when a student acts out and how it might seem as if it’s directed towards her, but the student might have some out of school stress or might just have something going on that’s overwhelming. So, she puts herself in the student’s shoes and stays calm instead of lashing out at the kid or giving back the same energy and she said that’s hard for her as a teacher because she wants to help all the kids, but she can’t fix everything.
As a teacher to build that trust and connection with the students she really likes figuring out the small things that students enjoy and little things that she can talk to each student about even if it’s something as small as the same nail color. She also makes a beginning of the year project for the students to make a slide of things about them so that she can get to know the things they enjoy and so their peers get to know them better.
Ms. Boritz said when students leave to go up to high school, she hopes to leave the type of impact on them that makes them feel accomplished though she said it would be awesome for them to know everything about math that’s not what she cares most about. She wants her students leaving and having themselves feel like they did something good and she wants them to feel like better students and better people once they leave.
The most important thing to her is that her students feel safe when they walk into her room and they aren’t scared to ask questions or talk to her, yea there can be messing around as long as they get their work done but her main priority is making sure the students feel safe when they come to her.
Her favorite memories when teaching are when her students walk up to the board to do the bell ringer and maybe they get it wrong and instead of her fixing it when they are done the students correct each other and help each other. That’s something she loves because instead of her teaching the lesson 24/7 she knows that the students can do it themselves with help from each other.
I hope in the end Ms. Boritz knows how much of an impact she makes on her students, at least I know she made a big one on me, and knows that even on the hard days she’s doing an amazing job and I couldn’t have asked for a better teacher to get me through 8th grade. Thank you so much Ms. Boritz.