A group of six Brookline educators chosen as this year’s Margaret Metzger Fellows took to a stage at the Lincoln School on Friday night to share a wide range of personal and professional experiences from their classrooms and counseling offices.
The annual fellowship is organized by the Brookline Education Foundation and the family of Margaret Metzger, who died in 2013 after a 40-year career teaching English at Brookline High School, where she was known for mentoring her fellow teachers. The fellowship gives educators a chance to write essays about their personal experiences in the Brookline school system. The six who are chosen spend time over the summer working individually and in group workshops, and are given a $1,000 stipend. They read their essays to a live audience at Friday’s event.
This year’s fellows were “honest and vulnerable and funny and emotional,” said Jennie Roffman, associate director of the Brookline Education Foundation.
“A theme that ran through the evening was the tension between being present for students and building crucial relationships without which students can’t feel safe enough to learn, but also practicing self-care and knowing that you can’t be perfect at this job every day,” Roffman said.
See excerpts of some of the essays below, and click the links to read the full essays. (Essay text was not available for fellowship winners Julia Mangan and Jeanette Sergeant.)
Peter Sedlak, English teacher, Brookline High School: “In reality, I think I cried because I felt I knew I had failed them. All those lessons in November on literary devices, or Hemingway’s style, didn’t connect with them. I feared they needed a teacher who worked with them and not one who stood in the front and conveyed information listed out in the state frameworks. At the time, I just didn’t know how to make it relevant to them. In that moment I felt the responsibility of being a teacher, that what I do or say does have an effect on others.” Read the full essay here.
Tim Hintz, K-2 Counselor, Pierce School: “If we remember things that are novel, then the first days in a new school are when the memory factory is uniquely productive. In my job as a school counselor, the first day of school happens 30 or 40 times a year as I welcome families from all over the world to Brookline Village. What will they think? What will they remember?” Read the full essay here.
Hannah Bjornson, 7th-8th English, Lawrence School: “What I realized is that despite being so uncomfortable with the curriculum and insecure about my abilities to deliver the instruction, kids learned. And now that I have had a chance to reflect on this year, I’m realizing that they learned because they felt safe. They learned because they felt connected. They learned because we had mutual respect for each other.” Read the full essay here.
Brendan McCarthy, transition counselor/learning center teacher, Brookline High School: “In June 2023, 85% of BHS grads who threw their caps in the air went off to a four year college. What happened to the others, the kids whose minds weren’t designed for four walls and state testing, or those who couldn’t afford the ever rising cost of college tuition? They tell a different story than their peers. As a transition counselor at BHS, my job is to help these young people choose meaningful plans for after high school, but it often feels like an uphill battle in a system designed to send students to college.” Read the full essay here.
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