My MTC experience in Roomates

              I am so thankful for my MTC experience.  While it is incredibly enjoyable going to school now…it wasn’t always all roses from day one.  To contrast the two years I will use my first and second year roommate.

Year One Roommate: Chris Curran

         Coming down to Mississippi not knowing anyone or much in general about the state, teaching or the what the experience would actually be like.  Enter my roommate - Chris Curran.  Chris is a laid back genius who happened to be valedictorian at Florida and an avid Tim Tebow fan.  I could always count on him having the projector hooked up on Saturday, but him asking DOK 1 questions about any professional sport.  He is an incredibly hard worker and broke down teaching rough high poverty kids to a science.  By the end of his second year, he was voted the Mullins Award winner and Teacher of the Year at our school.  I studied how he taught and interacted in the classroom and with kids in the hallway to make my classroom a safe and silent environment where kids enjoyed learning.  I began my first year making a whole lot of ‘first year’ mistakes and then trying to hammer out classroom management procedures and consistently enforce them to make a carbon copy of Chris’ classroom.

Between my first and second year – Chris graduated MTC, got married and moved to Nashville to pursue a Doctorate at Vanderbilt.  I ‘chopped wood’ under the guidance of Hunter Taylor and also married my best friend before returning the delta rejuvenated for Round Two.

Year Two Roommate: My Wife – Jenny

         One thing I’ve always admired about Jenny is her intense love for at risk kids.  While she would be the first to say that she isn’t sure teaching in an inner city environment is the best for her, I envy the way she cares for kids she worked with at Pine Valley Bible Camp.  As a counselor, she built meaningful relationships with kids who were often abused, neglected and often felt unloved.  By the end of my first year I was starting to care for my students in that way, however, it was honestly difficult to when the occasional class would steamroll you when you were starting to feel like you were improving.  Since day one this year, my class is silent.  My diagnostic test scores are light years ahead of where they were this time last year and I am confident in my positive, respectful and silent environment that it is one of the best classrooms in the school, like Chris’ was.  At the same time I feel like I am truly loving all 105 of my students and teaching them valuable life lessons like not saying ‘shut up’ or hat their consequences (aka calling out) have consequences. 

All in all my MTC experience transformed from one of the most difficult experiences in my life to one of the most rewarding.