The English department has adopted three student teachers this year: Jacob Dennis (co-teaching Creative Writing with Ms. Lange), David Anderson (co-teaching sophomore English with Mrs. Watters),and Torey Krepps (co-teaching Senior AP Lit and sophomore English with Ms. Krause).  The trio have known each other for about 4 months, ever since they began summer classes at the Teach Arizona grad program at the U of A, but all of them are friends now and even carpool together when coming to Sahuaro. To complete the  program, they have to teach two morning classes for one entire academic year with a mentor teacher, gradually taking on more teacher responsibility and then full on teaching second semester, along with doing their normal graduate classes.  When they graduate, they will all have master degrees and be able to start teaching as soon as they get hired.

Mr. Dennis wants to teach creative writing once he gets his teaching license. Mr. Anderson said that he was jealous of Mr. Dennis because he thinks creative writing is really fun and actually wanted to minor in it, but ended up minoring in education instead. When Mr. Anderson gets his teaching license he wants to teach his students that there is real life application to Language Arts and that it is not just all about getting an A on their papers.  Ms. Krepps want to teach general English with some sci-fi mixed into the curriculum.

Each of them decided that they wanted to be a teacher at different points. Mr. Dennis served in the Navy for 11 years before beginning college, stationed everywhere from Japan to Pearl Harbor. He did consider just staying in the Navy until his 20 years, but ultimately decided not to.  He went to the U of A free with the tuition assistance program and decided he wanted to pursue education his senior year of college.  His sophomore English teacher, Ms. Johnson, inspired him to go into creative writing, study English, and eventually become a teacher.

Mr. Anderson had been considering teaching for a long time. He was thinking about a lot of things, but when it came down to him choosing a minor in journalism or education- he went with education.  Mr. Anderson moved here from sunny Santa Rosa, California. When he first arrived, he hated it and planned to leave… but Tucson soon grew on him. He almost had his view of teaching destroyed by a teacher who was “the most infamous professor with one of the lowest rating on the whole website”, which changed his major from English to Journalism because the teacher scarred him and made him think he was terrible at English and terrible at everything. After that incident, he realized how ‘impacting’ teachers are to students and how it can literally change a person’s whole life and that’s why he wants to be the best teacher he can.

While Ms. Krepps decided she wanted to be a teacher 2 or 3 years ago.  Her mom has been a teacher for a total of 25 years, switching from Psychology to English, so she could become a teacher.  She graduated from high school in Indiana, and moved out here when she was 18.

Mr. Dennis and Ms. Krepps would like to teach upperclassman because of the maturity level and the amount of literary analysis that can be done, while Mr. Anderson would like to teach freshmen because he feels there is more room for growth and at that age, they are more impressionable compared to when you are a senior.  Most seniors know what they want to be and their path for the future. All three of them believe that some of the state standards should be taken away and new things added.  One that they felt strongly about is the importance of knowing how to make a resume and applying for jobs because it’s an important skill to have and many adults have never been taught how to do it.

A fun fact about Mr. Anderson is that he has a tattoo on his left arm of a redwood tree to remind him of northern California and when he is 80 years old he wants to get a huge tattoo on his entire back of an angel of death that says ‘time flies’.  He plays soccer in a league at the U of A.  When Mr. Dennis was younger he played little league, but it wasn’t his thing. Ms. Krepps actively plays in Ultimate Frisbee leagues and is currently training for a full marathon – that is 26.2 miles. Even if you don’t have any of the student teachers, if you see them you should stop and talk to them for a bit because they’re more interesting than you would think and they still live their lives and do fun things instead of like most other teachers that just go do boring stuff or grade papers.