The best tool a teacher can have is her cellphone.
That’s the motto for Tara Hutchinson, as she says nowadays interactions with students don’t simply stay within the confines of Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m.
Tara is a 5th generation Norfolk County resident, born and raised in the community and coming back to teach.
Teaching was not Tara’s first career path, but it was always something she considered.
In high school, she debated being an environmentalist or a teacher – ultimately going to the side of helping the environment.
But, years later, things came full circle when she had to work with local schools on presentations and lessons and fell in the love with the process and working with the classroom.
She went back to school to become a teacher who, in her own words, can be stern when she needs to be but would rather laugh with the class any day of the week.
She’s taught multiple grades in her career from Kindergarten to Grade 12, but she thoroughly enjoys where she is right now teaching a Grade 7/8 classroom.
She said at this age, students are really starting to discover who they are as a person and when you give them room to express that in their school work it is always incredible what comes out.
She’s actually seen virtual learning as being somewhat beneficial for her classes when it comes to students expressing themselves as many feel free to act like themselves through the safety of a screen as opposed to in front of their peers face to face.
One of the reasons virtual learning went well for Tara was the fact many of her projects already incorporated the online submission process, so her students were used to the programs and how to use them.
With that, there are still challenges as she tried to limit things that needed to be printed, finding it unfair on parents to have to use ink and paper for multiple kids, and the main hurdle to overcome was simply that students wanted to be in a classroom.
Students were also no strangers to getting a hold of Tara through Teams, as we previously said, she thoroughly believes the cell phone is a teacher’s best friend.
For Tara, if a student needs to get a hold of her with a question, she tries to make herself available to help even if it’s a homework question at 9 p.m.
She says this opens doors for students to talk to her freely, like explaining a hockey game that went late and maybe they don’t feel they can get homework done in time.
She wants to be available and understanding to students who may have issues pop up.
You can hear Tara’s full interview below: