Troy Thibedeau: Precalculus and Calculus AB, BC
Thibedeau is in his 30th year teaching, and the current school year is his 23rd at Shorewood High School. In his classroom at lunch, almost daily, students come in and work under guidance. The room is filled with the sound of students collaborating quietly, turning pages, and penciling out scratch work.
Besides math, students know Thibedeau for his love of Dartball– he plays in a league in the winter– and Canadian curling. He also likes to read. His favorite book of all time is a children’s book: Paddle-to-the-Sea by Holling Holling.
Thibedeau tutored students at his high school, mostly in math and science. Math was straightforward, unlike other subjects like English. He liked the simplicity of knowing that there was one right answer.
“Math was easy for me,” said Thibedeau. “I loved math. It made sense– two plus two is always four.”
Many of the math teachers where he went to school were caring, and he formed strong connections with them that he guessed were stronger because of his fascination with the subject.
He had always wanted to be a teacher, but when he graduated from UW-Madison in 1984, there was a job shortage in education and a surplus of new graduates. Instead, Thibedeau used his first degree in Information Systems to work in finance. In 1990, while still working full-time, he began attending night school at UW-Milwaukee for a post-baccalaureate in Education. He quit his job and became a student teacher at Saint Francis High School in 1993. After seven years as a teacher at Saint Francis, Richard Munroe, former Shorewood high school principal, contacted him for an opening in the Shorewood Math Department. In 2001, he began teaching at Shorewood.
Thibedeau wrote his Calculus curriculum from scratch when he came to Shorewood, left with no materials from the previous teacher. The process took him over three years; he says the curriculum is still continuously evolving, and he often tailors it to the different student groups he teaches every year. If he feels a lesson doesn’t go well the first time, for example, he spends extra days on it to help students understand the content.
He attended a seminar and conducted extensive independent research to develop the curriculum’s sequencing. The research included looking at other teachers’ curriculums, rereading textbooks, and studying past CollegeBoard exams. In the process of writing the curriculum, he had to relearn Calculus. To do this, he worked through many of the problems himself.
“A lot of that was done over the summer, or done at night,” Thibedeau said.
All worksheets, tests, and warmups that students take were created by Thibedeau. Some of the problems were from textbooks or other teachers; some he made up himself.
Thibedeau was inspired by his senior year math teacher, Mr. Hawley, who had a penchant for jokes.
“I want to make the class fun first. If students are having fun doing math, the passion comes along with that,” Thibedeau said.
Another inspiration was famous teacher Jaime Escalante, the subject of the documentary Stand and Deliver. Escalante taught Calculus to disadvantaged students in Los Angeles, in a school with under-developed facilities and a high level of chronic absenteeism, and his class did so well in comparison to previous years that the school’s results were questioned by the Examiner Board.
In one particularly memorable scene, Escalante is explaining integration by parts to the group. Everyone is struggling to understand, and then Escalante steps up to the board, brandishing a piece of chalk. “It’s as easy as tic-tac-toe,” he tells them, and draws a three-columned table on the board. In the first column, he writes the v derivatives. In the second, he writes the du integrals. In the third, he writes alternating signs, then moves down each row, forming the full integration from the values in the boxes.
Thibedeau read Escalante’s biography, and now shows the movie at the end of the year for students in Calculus BC. The students at Shorewood also learn the tic-tac-toe method. During that unit, notebooks are covered in cross-hatched tables.
Thibedeau struggled with English in high school. In his senior year, he vividly recalled having a strict, difficult-to-please teacher. His class often struggled with their essays. Once, she slammed their essays on their desks as she returned them, and told them that they were so bad that she had made her daughter, a freshman in high school, grade them. Thibedeau hopes to never make a student feel that way for being confused.
“I will never get mad at a student for not understanding because I know how it feels not to be good at something. They just need more time,” Thibedeau said.
His favorite part of teaching is seeing students have their ‘aha’ moment – finally understanding difficult content.
“You can see how their eyes light up, the smile on their face, and sometimes the joy comes later. I’ve had students email me in college, thanking me for keeping my classes rigorous because it made college easier,” Thibedeau said.
He enjoys teaching AP Calculus AB the most, because he gets the most ‘aha’ moments. His least favorite part of teaching is working with students who are not intrinsically motivated to improve. He does not offer test corrections, believing that students wouldn’t put in the effort the first time, and some would receive answers from their friends who had gotten answers right the first time.
If there is one thing he wished people knew about teachers, he said, it is the personal time sacrifices many make for their students’ educations.
“[People don’t realize] how much time teachers put in outside the classroom…how many teachers give up lunch periods, free periods, how many are answering emails on weekends, building curriculum,” Thibedeau said.
A good teacher, to Thibedeau, is someone who is caring and passionate, motivated to inspire their students but respectful of their other interests.
“[A good teacher is] a teacher who genuinely cares about the well-being of the student, is passionate about a subject and tries to instill that passion into their student, but doesn’t take their subject too seriously, knowing [their] subject might not be the most important to the student,” Thibedeau said.
Sheila Mooney: English I, Literature of the Modern World, Composition for College
Mooney has taught at Shorewood High School for 23 years. In 1990, she graduated from UW-Madison with degrees in English and Art. She wanted to pursue a career in design but couldn’t drive to an available job in art because she didn’t have a driver’s license when she graduated.
“I hadn’t thought of teaching when I went to college. I definitely wanted to work in art design,” said Mooney. “Really, the reason I went into teaching was because I didn’t have a driver’s license and so I couldn’t get a job at this art factory that I wanted to work at. I lived on the East Side my whole life, so didn’t have to drive anywhere. Just used the bus.”
For a while, she worked odd jobs—at a deli, as a house painter.
“Not much fun,” Mooney said.
She discovered that she enjoyed teaching by tutoring. Then a friend asked her to help him teach GED classes. She taught night school for 10 years. During that time, she received a certification in English education at Alverno College.
Soon after receiving her certification, in 2000, Mooney started to teach at Shorewood. In 2012, she obtained her master’s degree in Literature from UW-Milwaukee.
Mooney was inspired by her fourth grade teacher, Ms. Jackson, among others.
“I loved Ms. Jackson’s energy. She was really direct. She had a lot of energy, enthusiasm. She got us moving,” Mooney said. “I really appreciated being in the room with her.”
One high school math teacher also stood out to her.
“You could ask him any question about math and he never made you feel bad about it. It was just fabulous,” Mooney said.
In Mooney’s senior year, a different math teacher stood out for worse reasons.
“He kind of humiliated people,” she said. “I was absent for a funeral, my grandmother’s funeral. And I came back and I had to take a test and I said, ‘I don’t remember any of this stuff being in the unit.’ And he said, ‘well, that’s what you get for being absent.’”
Because of her experience with him, Mooney strives to be understanding with her students. Additionally, to help students feel more comfortable in the classroom, Mooney does not make them correct each other’s quizzes and tests as she had to in high school.
Mooney started at Shorewood teaching two classes: English I and Composition for College. A few years into teaching, she spent time revising the English I curriculum with another English teacher. Later, with fellow English teacher Eric Gietzen, she created the curriculum for Literature of the Modern World. They composed the curriculum in Gietzen’s front yard, where he lived in Bayview.
Her curriculums have changed slightly year to year. For example, Composition for College used to have a student portfolio at the end of the semester, compiling 50% of a student’s grade, which she removed due to stress for both students and teachers. This year, she and English teacher Michael Halloran plan to reintroduce a short story unit to English I. On weeks where essays come in, she spends hours on weekends, early mornings, lunches, and free periods leaving feedback and grading.
Each class starts with a to-do of the day, outlining where the students will start and end. She often starts with individual work, then moves to small group work, and tries to shift activities two or three times per class period.
Outside of the classroom, Mooney enjoys swimming, painting and writing.
“I write all the time,” Mooney said. “I write to think, I write to process. I write poetry. First thing in the morning, I write lists. I put pen to paper because it helps me think. If…I’m hearing something that I’m still grappling with, processing, I write and I think through my thoughts over and over again.”
Her least favorite part of teaching is distractions from cell phones and a lack of motivation to work outside of class.
“I think these days there’s kind of the question of ‘What are we doing? What’s our purpose now?’ In an age where students can, or think they can, write a paper in two seconds and not have to think about it, and they value speed over substance and thinking… that’s a pretty big problem for teachers like me who are teaching thinking and writing and reading, all the things that take time. And if you don’t value thinking and writing and reading, how can I compete with a soccer game on a cell phone?” Mooney said.
Students can succeed in her class, Mooney said, by putting in time and prioritizing academics.
“You can’t read a novel unless you’re doing something outside of class,” Mooney said. “I think there’s a lot of pressure on students to do too many extracurriculars to pad college resumes. I think that students value that kind of number— like being busy somehow matters more than your thinking, your curriculars, what you’re doing in school.”
Her favorite classes to teach are upper level literature classes. Her favorite book to teach is The House of the Spirits. Her favorite book of all time is White Teeth by Zadie Smith, which she hopes to soon introduce into the Modern Lit curriculum.
“What I enjoy about teaching is, first of all, it’s never boring,” Mooney said. “I get to teach a great subject. I love reading those books even if I’ve read them year in, year out. I love hearing what students have to say about it, and sometimes it makes me laugh. I think it’s mostly fun to work with people as they’re thinking– as they’re grappling with ideas, overhearing the snippets of conversations.”
Since first beginning to teach, she has slowed her curriculum pacing and added more in-class work time for students.
“I was trying to keep up with the teachers that I was working with, and realized that it was kind of a crazy pacing. You’re here for eight hours; there’s only so much time you could spend outside of class,” Mooney said.
She enjoys her classes–starting discussions, leading people through the process of drafting and revision, reading student writing. A good teacher, to Mooney, is someone who can make a classroom feel alive.
“What makes a good teacher? Somebody who works hard and who cares, and who’s enthusiastic about their subject,” Mooney said. “I think having a sense of humor is a good thing… You’re dealing with people, all different kinds of people, who are coming in at all different places in their lives– you know, just broke up with their boyfriend, moved, dad left the house– and you’ve got to teach them about the comma. Good luck.”