In addition to new superintendent Rich Carlson, the Haines Borough School District hired 10 new teachers this year. Four are profiled in this week’s CVN. Brief features on six others will be published in next week’s newspaper.
Jason Muccino is the seventh person to hold the full-time music teacher job at Haines School since 2002. But the 18-year veteran teacher said he’s not daunted by the job’s high turnover.
“I’m hoping to end that. I have some good plans. The community is great. The kids are great, and everyone seems supportive,” Muccino said this week.
Muccino is a saxophone player who taught elementary music programs in his native New Jersey for 10 years before getting the travel bug while visiting schools in Japan under a three-week Fulbright program.
He went on to teach all levels of music at schools in Malaysia, China and Thailand. Most recently he taught at a private international school in Egypt. Three years ago, he spent a year in Klawock teaching music in grades 5-12, as well as fourth-grade language arts and math. He visited Haines during a student music festival that year, he said.
Muccino said he’s spoken with former teacher Kristy Totten to help make the transition. “We’ve been emailing for months. She was tremendous.”
As music teacher for grades 5-12, Muccino will lead at least five bands and two choirs. Although he has primarily taught band in his career, he’s certified and qualified to teach vocal and instrumental music.
Muccino said he’s not daunted by the work load of the job, as the school here is small.
“My main focus will be to build the music program as much as I can, mainly in the high school, but I hope to get all the kids excited about music” and get the community involved as well.
Students and parents can follow his programs on the school district’s website, which will include information on what students are working on and what’s coming up.
The school’s musical instruments show some wear and tear, he said. “Hopefully at some point we’ll be able to get more instruments, but right now I don’t have any concerns.”
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Sara Hadad, the school’s new technology integration specialist, has worked 13 years as a teacher, including at the elementary, middle school and high school levels.
A native of Trinidad, Colo., Hadad also has taught at a junior college and spent three years teaching computer skills to prisoners as part of their rehabilitation and job training. In addition, she worked two years as a probation officer.
Hadad said she understands that some residents are skeptical of a recent school initiative putting more focus on computers. “This job exists everywhere. The technology is there but teachers don’t have time to adapt all their lessons” to computer applications.
“My job is to be an expert on what’s available and how it can be used (and to) integrate technology into the curriculum they’re already teaching,” Hadad said. “Kids already know how to use computers. They need to learn how to use them in school.”
Technology can allow more than one student at a time to write into a document and to “see” an algebraic equation in the form of a graph, as it changes using differnt variables “It helps abstract ideas make more sense,” she said.
Hadad expects to work with teachers during the planning time and after hours, and she’ll also co-teach. “(Teachers) give me lists of what they’re looking for so I can go out and find what’s available.”
In one recent case, the district had a sixth-grade class available through Google. “People didn’t realize what it was capable of.”
Computers can streamline classroom work and assignments by allowing students to pick up lessons anywhere and easily find due dates and other information. “It’s how we work as adults all the time,” Hadad said.
Her grant-funded position will include instructing students on basic care of computers.
Hadad has previously worked as a school technology coordinator. She said fully integrating new technology into classrooms is typically a three-year process.
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Jason Eson brings a diversity of experience to his job as special education teacher in the middle school, serving students in grades 5-8.
Eson has an undergraduate degree in media production and had a film production company in Florida, making promotional and educational videos. He also has built trails in state and national parks in Alaska, operated a bicycle shop and worked at a fish hatchery in Port Armstrong.
Eson was drawn into teaching by the interaction he had with people at those jobs, and the opportunities he had to learn from and teach others. Over time, he also learned patience, he said.
He worked as an intensive needs aide at the junior high level in Juneau the past two years and has a teaching degree from University of Alaska-Southeast.
Eson said that his job, while having challenging aspects, involves just a handful of students, making it more rewarding for him, as he can see individual students improve.
“It’s super rewarding and something where you can see progress every day. It’s gratifying to help everyone learn and teach more effectively,” Eson said.
Eson said his job is to watch teachers and students and to design and implement strategies to make teaching of special needs students more effective.
As an aide in Juneau, he worked with intellectually impaired sixth graders who initially could identify only about 15 letters in the alphabet. At the end of his second year with the students, they were reading at a third-grade level, he said, and could read directions on a frozen dinner.
“It gave them life skills they otherwise wouldn’t have. When you give someone a skill that allows them to live more independently, their life is going to be so much richer for it,” Eson said.
Eson also taught mountaineering at UAS. “Hopefully, on some basis, I can do some of that here.”
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Tracy Wirak operated a science camp in Haines the last two summers and taught sixth grade for two years at Napi Elementary School in Browning, Mont.
This year she’s teaching math to fourth and fifth-graders and reading to grades 4-6. Her goals including helping students build up “number sense.” She also wants to build students’ vocabulary in math and reading.
Wirak said she likes to take time to learn students’ individual learning styles and she encourages creativity and enthusiasm in the classroom.
Wirak is using the district’s new math curriculum called “Math in Focus” based on a model from Singapore that’s proven very successful.
She uses “manipulatives” like tokens for students to learn in a hands-on way. “It’s about getting a sense of how numbers work and the value of numbers. There’s also a lot of problem-solving and a lot of word problems. Rather than just looking at numbers, we’re really breaking it down, so they understand why math works.”
By learning the building blocks of math, students can apply math to more of their day-to-day challenges, according to the curriculum.
Also in Wirak’s class, students will get to talk about their ideas, including in groups. “They get to share their ideas as much as possible.”
In reading, Wirak is planning readers’ theaters as well as workshops in which students meet in small groups and discuss challenging books, including characters and elements of books they did and didn’t enjoy.
“It’s more exciting to read in a group and share ideas about what you’re reading,” Wirak said.
About half the reading will be nonfiction, aimed at teaching students how to read and learn from nonfiction, including biographies and instructional reading such as recipes and directions in building things.