Miami-Dade veteran teachers still psyched for the first day of school
By Ari Odzer
The sleeping giant is about to wake up.
The nation’s third-largest school district, Miami-Dade County Public Schools, comes roaring out of the starting blocks Thursday morning. Roughly 330,000 students and nearly 20,000 teachers will be back on campus. And if you think students are anxious and nervous, teachers are in the same boat.
“It’s my 32nd year,” said Gretchen Coscullwela, a fourth-grade teacher at South Miami K-8 Center.
I asked her if she still gets excited about the first day of school.
“Yes, I do, it’s hard to sleep at night, I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about what’s gonna happen and all the things I have to do, I still do get excited and a little nervous!” Coscullwela said.
“I sure do, I still get excited and I still get nervous and I still wonder how my students are gonna be, and the same feeling I had the first year, I still have this year,” said Karina Miguelez, a 28-year veteran of the classroom who teaches at South Miami K-8 Center.
Dance teacher Natalya Hall was visibly excited as she set up her dance studio classroom, downstairs from Miguelez’s room.
“Super, like right now I’m bursting, I can’t wait for tomorrow morning when these kids get here and I hear what they did for the summer, they’re just so happy, I’m excited, yes,” Hall said.
So yes, veteran teachers still get psyched about the first day of school. They also have another thing in common, each of them has had to adjust to the dramatic changes in their profession over the decades.
“I think over the years, things have changed a lot, obviously, technology being completely immersed into our daily instruction, I think class sizes have also changed,” Hall said.
Hall said social media exposes kids to adult themes at a younger age. Coscullwela told us one adjustment many teachers have made involves working with immigrant kids.
“You know, over time students have come in from other countries, and we have students come in for the first time to school, and to our school situation so that’s changed a lot, to try to bring them into what we expect of them,” she said.
Miguelez said the amount of standardized testing has increased over the years, but with that testing comes valuable data about each student’s strengths and weaknesses.
“It helps tremendously, because with that data I can focus on what the students need to improve on,” Miguelez said.
So the teachers are coming back to the classroom armed with data, with experience, and a love for what they do, because they certainly don’t teach for the money.
“Their faces, their happiness, watching them grow,” Hall said, explaining the motivation to be an educator.