Freshmen teachers replace an experienced crew in Lynchburg schools

By Annie McCallum
Lynchburg News & Advance
Published: August 24, 2008

The weeks leading up to the start of school were a whirlwind for new teacher Lindsey Hanger.

Just married and moved in only weeks ago, she admitted to being stressed on her first new-teacher workday.

“I was really nervous,” she said.

On day No. 2, it was a different story. Her classroom was coming together and she had met many of her students at orientation.

Hanger, who will teach English 9 at Heritage High School, is one of about 30 freshman teachers in Lynchburg City Schools. She has big shoes to fill. Area school districts, including Lynchburg, were confronted with a significant loss last year — veteran teachers turned retirees.

Heritage, for example, lost more than 100 years of collective experience from its English department when three longtime teachers retired. With institutional wisdom out the door, area schools hired a handful of newbies to help fill the various vacancies created by the retirements. Principals say the pool of new teaching talent brings fresh enthusiasm to classrooms.

“I haven’t felt any pressure,” Hanger said, adding she’s focused on the task at hand — readying for the first day of school.

“Hopefully,” she said, “one day I’ll be one of those old teachers.”

Heritage High School Principal Mark Miear underscored the importance of longtime educators, especially those he lost from his English department.

“Those teachers were excellent examples of what it means to work hard up until the last day,” he said.

Miear said the department has “worked together and rallied” and he’s not worried about the upcoming year. Students are in very capable hands.

“Nothing replaces experience,” Miear said. “It’s difficult to do that. However I’m really excited about those we’ve hired.”

Most, he said, have some experience under their belt.

“We hired experience. Now we didn’t hire as much experience as we lost,” he said.

For Heritage, school begins Monday. It’s also the first day for Appomattox, Bedford and Campbell counties.

Hanger said she’s ready.

Posters adorn the far wall of her classroom. Leftovers from apartment life — a lamp and clock deemed too girly for the home she now shares with her husband — have a place in her classroom, too.

“I got my room in a little bit of order,” she said with a smile.

Hanger, who spent last year working in Colonial Heights, first as a long-term substitute and then as a full-time teacher, said this year marks the official start to her first year of teaching. She will teach ninth-grade English so her students, like her, also will be new.

“Probably the biggest challenge is to meet every student where they need to be met,” she said, later adding, “I think the biggest thing for ninth-graders is getting them to buy into their education and that they need to graduate.”

Her first-year goal? To give students the skills to communicate and make sure no one fails.

Just down the road at Brookville High School, teacher Erica Moore also was settling into a new role.

“I’m a career-switcher,” Moore said proudly, explaining this is her first official year of teaching.

Working as a Wachovia financial center manager for four years, Moore said she hit her mid-20s and got an itch. She wondered if banking was what she really was meant to do.

“I love school. I love education. I love to learn,” she said.

Teaching was a natural fit.

“I just wanted to jump in and do it,” she said, adding she will be a student and teacher this year while she finishes a master’s degree in educational leadership.

Moore steps into her role in the social studies department, which is short on some experience this year.

Brookville principal Jim Whorley said when tenured faculty leave, he tries, as other principals do, to fill those class assignments with more experienced teachers still at school.

“You know you can take all the classes you can take and do student teaching and do observations and what not, but there’s nothing like the on-job experience and there’s just nothing to replace it,” Whorley said.

“I always try and remember when I started out and how awkward it was and how you feel so uncomfortable because it’s something brand new to you.”

At Brookville, existing faculty moved into teaching government and U.S. history, which were left vacant after a retirement. Moore will teach mostly World History I, which is a ninth-grade course.

“World history is not something everyone wants to teach,” she said. “But I don’t mind so much, the world.”

Moore also thinks one teacher can make a difference, learning can be fun and little things make a difference. That’s new-teacher passion Whorley and other administrators bank on.

“I think they bring an enthusiasm for their job,” he said. “Those of us that have been around for a while, we probably don’t get as excited and apprehensive about it because we’ve done it for a while.”

Sitting in her classroom two weeks before school and trying to perfect the arrangement of desks, Moore also echoed the value of those that came before.

“I think it’s disappointing you don’t have those resources to draw on,” she said of veteran educators. “The more experience the better.”

Coming Monday: A division-by-division glimpse of what’s new in area school systems.