ESK Voices: Carol O’Donnell
Our culture of lifelong learning begins with our faculty. We hire teachers who are experts in their subject area and passionate about sharing their knowledge with students. We then commit to their professional development to assure they are always expanding their knowledge base in both their subject area and how to best engage students in the classroom. Students can feel the authenticity of their teachers’ interest in them and their subject. Our culture of trust, honesty, integrity, and close faculty/student relationships creates an atmosphere of safety and personal well-being where extraordinary learning takes place. In our ESK Voices series, you will get a unique look at the faculty that make ESK what it is.
Today, we continue with Middle School language arts teacher Carol O’Donnell.
See below for more from Ms. O’Donnell.
What is your favorite part of the school day and why?
My favorite part of the school day is often the morning, we all have more energy and we’re fresh in our classes. I like coming into the 6th grade hallway where they’re thinking about their day and they’re with their friends. I get to talk to them about how homework went and see what they’re doing, what news they’re looking at, and what games they’re playing on their devices.
How do you incorporate your personal interests into your teaching methods or activities?
As a teacher I see that I’m a facilitator of learning and creativity. I also feel that very much I’m trying to get kids to think outside the box, I want to teach them skills so they can play and learn. But one of the things I really like to do is play games. I play games for grammar and when we learn parts of speech we often use Lego blocks to try and represent a noun, or a verb, or an adjective. So I try as much as I can to bring in creative means to make children think and write and learn.
What aspect of teaching at ESK are you most passionate about?
I am especially a lover of writing and literature. For example for reading, I’m the Language Arts teacher, but I also facilitate a lot of outside reading. We will have days that are free reading days, students bring in their stuffed animals and their sleeping bags and we’ll just read for the entire period. I try to keep track of their reading logs and have them share that with me. I love reading some of the novels we’ve pulled into 7th grade. We’re reading Romeo and Juliet, The Outsiders, and a book called Paperboy. As a writing teacher, I will say I think writing is one of the most profound activities. It’s a way that you help children learn about who they are and what they think. Writing is a way of plumbing your depths and talking is just not the same. Students learn about what they think and what they feel through writing. So writing is definitely one of my passions.
When did you decide to become a teacher and why did you make that decision?
I decided to become a teacher fairly randomly, to be honest. I was out of college, I was trying to write and I needed part time jobs, so I started tutoring. I was tutoring foster children and the children of Japanese businessmen. I actually found that I really loved doing that, so in the middle of a year I started teaching in a Catholic school in Washington Heights and fell in love with the career. Then went to Bank Street, Teachers College, and made it my profession.
What is the most challenging part of being a teacher at ESK?
One of the hardest things, as a Language Arts teacher is that if you want students to write you have to be dedicated to giving feedback, which takes time. It feels like time goes by too quickly and you wish you could be with them a little longer. You want to have as much time as you can to give them feedback and sometimes there just isn’t enough, which is hard.
Do you have a child/story which captures something you believe makes ESK special?
Last year I assigned 7th graders an essay to come up with a thesis about a dystopian society. What is a dystopian world? They had to read The Lottery, which we read together, by Shirley Jackson and also a couple of chapters of The Hunger Games. When I first assigned this thesis they were upset, several kids actually almost started to cry because it just seemed like a hard big project, right? They would have to do so much work. And it’s hard to not know what your think, you would have to analyze, and you have to really read and think, and there would be no one answer. It would be about how you support yourself in a thesis. The papers that came in were amazing. I had one girl, one of the girls that actually filled up the most, had one of the most beautiful thesis statements I read. It was essentially saying dystopian worlds are worlds where people’s lives are random and up for chance and then she supported it all through the paper and it was beautiful.