ESK Voices: Chris Bishop
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 begin with a teacher who has been around since day one, First Grade Teacher Chris Bishop.
See below for more from Mr. Bishop.
What is your favorite part of the school day and why?
I think my favorite part of the school day is probably writing workshop. Teaching kids to write is a passion of mine, it’s one of the reasons I decided to teach. Watching kids figure out how to come up with topics and then to explore themselves as writers in all different varieties of writing is a real passion of mine.
How do you incorporate your personal interests into your teaching methods or activities?
One of the things I think I like best about teaching at ESK is that we get to develop our own curriculums, so I’ve been fortunate to take some things I love- I love insects and butterflies and science, and so one of the things we do at the beginning of the year is we study monarch butterflies and we raise our own caterpillars. It allows me to work and develop a butterfly garden here, at ESK, as part of that project. I’ve always felt like if you were passionate about something and you were allowed to teach that, it makes the teaching experience more enjoyable and probably the learning experience more in depth for the kids.
What aspect of teaching at ESK are you most passionate about?
I think the aspect of teaching, here at ESK, that I appreciate the most is probably the freedom we’re given as teachers to really reach students in a variety of ways. We don’t have a canned curriculum, and it’s so nice to be able to change what I need to do from year to year, from class to class, and from child to child. Sometimes you don’t have the freedom to do that.
When did you decide to become a teacher and why did you make that decision?
Before I started teaching I was working at the University of Tennessee and I had been there for 12 years. My kids, I have two daughters, and my daughters were in Kindergarten and Preschool. I used to visit my Kindergarten daughter’s classroom all the time, her teacher had worked for me at UT. I found myself in that classroom more and more and more. It was hard for me to go to work because I would rather stay there. That was really what led me to make the decision. I knew I always would teach one day, and that’s really what put me over the top.
What day during the school year do you look forward to the most and why?
I think my favorite day of the school year is when we have the trial of Alexander T. Wolf. We do a neat unit on point of view with Alexander T. Wolf who is the wolf in the story of The Three Little Pigs. We end up putting him on trial and the kids come up with their own answers. Just watching the kids rise to the occasion and have to answer open ended questions is a lot of fun.
Do you have a child/story which captures something you believe makes ESK special?
I’m not sure I have a story or a particular child that captures how I feel here at ESK, but I’ve had a couple of children who’ve come to my class just recently this year- they came in late. Every time that that happens where we add a student after the year has begun I’m always amazed at how the other kids in my class take that child under and make them feel, within a couple a days, they feel like they’ve been there the whole year. I think that’s a credit to the type of community we have and what Father Josh does in Chapel and how we’re able to talk with the children in our Tribes Agreements. We really have a nurturing and loving group of children here.
What significant changes have you seen at ESK since you began your career here?
When I think about significant changes I think the most significant change is really just in the size of the school. The thing I think is neatest about the school is that there hasn’t been a significant change in how we are culturally and what we think is important educationally. We started the school and we wanted to be child-focused and we wanted to develop this community of learners and we created that early on, and as we’ve grown we haven’t lost that. So it’s neat that we haven’t changed that portion, that part, so that aspect of the school still remains. The bigger that we get and the more we change our curriculum and add things and add programs and offerings for the students I think it’s nice that we maintain that identity.