By Ethan Rhodes
Several months ago, during a random fourth period in September and having sought to see something interesting, English teacher Mr. Kunz ventured from his second-floor classroom into the tech office, in which many of the tech teachers were gathered having lunch. One might expect to see an uninspiring scene of the mundane workplace lunch break: tech teachers eating, reclining, and laboring, all in quiet and isolation. But such, Mr. Kunz there observed not.
He instead witnessed a wondrous portrait of camaraderie and reciprocity: the tech teachers consolidated about a table, and upon the table were solving a puzzle while engaged in educational discourse. He was astonished at the unique manner in which the tech teachers recreated as a decompression from the stress of giving instruction.
“Doing puzzles like the tech teachers is a great mode of communication between faculty members. Speaking as a teacher who doesn’t have a specific mechanism or time of planning and relaxation with his colleagues, I’m fascinated to see how other teachers can harness closeness to work together and talk out ideas,” said English teacher and Rodequoit advisor Joe Kunz.
Puzzle time in the tech office is a solitary medium through which the tech teachers bond and coordinate with each other. “We almost all have lunch together and spend much time talking about our plans for the classroom, and stuff that’s beyond the classroom,” said tech teacher Mr. Rivellino. “We get together after school – sometimes, at least once per month, before school, too, for breakfast. We spend a lot of quality time together, as friends. We have become close through years of years of shared interest and contributing to each other’s personal projects. We all like to design and build. We all have common interests and hobbies that overlap with each other, and that creates bonds between us.”
This recreational cooperation between the tech teachers translates into worktime cooperation at IHS, in tech planning and tech classrooms. Tech teachers all have a specialization in the field and help each other create lessons, understand the student body, and better the experience of their students. Junior Joseph Vinnette, who has indulged in multiple tech classes since his freshman year, explained that “You get many different perspectives and outlooks in taking tech – some tech teachers are interested in cars, other tech teachers are interested in carpentry, others are interested in electricity, for example – all the tech teachers have assorted interests in tech– but when the tech teachers work together the classes themselves are brightened. Tech is at times difficult, but through cooperation, the tech teachers make tech compelling, and fun.”
Often, tech is delegitimized as secondary to the supposed “core” classes. But tech holds immense importance as an academic subject. It typically operates through tactile application, not traditional lecture, and therefore provides students with unorthodox, physical learning environments. It instills in students valuable skills of craftsmanship and specialization. It normalizes myriads of palpable fields of work, like carworking and woodworking and electricianship and communications. It produces the handymen, the engineers, the architects, and the inventors of tomorrow, from the perceptive minds and coarse hands of whom future innovations and future fixings will come.
Here at IHS, as an entire professional department, through companionship, the tech teachers make tech scholarship even more enriching, both for themselves and for students.
The Rodequoit 