A select number of EHS students graduate high school and leave to get their degrees, only to find themselves back where they started. Now they take on the role of being teachers and are colleagues with the same people they used to learn from.
Teachers such as Mr. Adams, Mrs. Cochran, Mrs. Aleman, Mr. Been, and Mr. Stewart all find themselves back in the school they graduated from a few years ago. These teachers all went to classes under current EHS teachers like Mrs. Maguire, Ms. Pierson, Mr. Preston, Mr. Shaw, and many more. This long string of teacher-student relationships makes it so that teachers discover their passions when learning in their colleagues’ classrooms.
Although the relationships between these teachers have drastically changed since they were students, many of them can still remember being in each other’s classes and the memories that were involved. Mrs. Maguire recalled when she made a mistake and told her students that pigs sweat. Mrs. Cochran, who grew up on a farm, knew this wasn’t true. Mrs. Maguire said, “She sent me an email over the summer, cited sources, and respectfully told me I was wrong.” They still both laugh about this story today. These memories stay fresh in the young teachers’ minds with comfort in the way the teachers treated them in class.
Mrs. Aleman works in the science department alongside her former teachers, Mrs. Maguire and Ms. Pierson. She found her love for biology when sitting in Mrs. Maguire’s classes years ago. With this being her second year in the high school as a teacher, she says she looks up to these women and the way they run their classes. She is a new teacher and still has things to learn, so she enjoys having these women to help her grow.
Mr. Adams also took his high school business classes through his colleague in the business department, Mr. Love. He was able to not only find his passion for business in these classes, but also find a lifelong role model. “Mr. Love helped guide my decision for a college major, and now I’m working alongside him,” said Mr. Adams.
Mr. Love was able to watch Adams grow and become the man he is today. “It’s nice to see him come back,” said Mr. Love. “I never thought this would be his path, but he seems incredibly happy with it. I can’t imagine him not doing this for the rest of his life at this point.”
Both Mrs. Aleman and Mr. Adams knew when applying for the job they would be working alongside their past teachers. “At first, it was kind of weird because I saw them on a pedestal,” said Mrs. Aleman. She had to adjust her mindset to see and refer to a colleague rather than her biology teacher. Although they had to adjust to this shift in relationships, these teachers never stopped helping their past students once they graduated from EHS. The young teachers received recommendations, life advice, and became aware of the job opening because of the teachers they developed relationships with while attending high school.
The teachers of EHS care about their students even when they aren’t a part of their class roster anymore. The care and support they show their students is one of the main reasons why so many Eaton alumni return to fill this role in teenagers’ lives. “I think about the way they made me feel when I was in high school,” said Mrs. Aleman, “I want to make other people feel that way because I always felt safe, loved, and taken care of.” The young teachers of Eaton High School want to help bring the welcoming culture they felt as students to current students. These teachers are the reason why Eaton’s culture will be continued for generations to come. “I still want to uphold that Eaton pride that they taught me,” said Mrs. Cochran.
These young teachers were not only able to discover their passions through their teachers, but also learn life advice that would help carry them through their hard times. Mrs. Aleman recalls being extremely nervous for a test in high school and Mr. Preston asked her what the worst thing that could happen was. She responded as a typical high schooler would, saying she would fail and her parents would be mad. Mr. Preston said something along the lines of, “But will you die?” This simple statement changed the way Mrs. Aleman viewed life once she graduated high school. It showed her that no matter what situation she was in, she could always be in a worse situation.
Mrs. Cochran bases her classroom values on what she learned in Mr. Preston’s class. Mrs. Cochran’s number one rule as a teacher is respect goes both ways. She was able to see respect demonstrated between teachers and students when she took Mr. Preston’s class. “Having that high regard of respect was super important to me,” said Mrs.Cochran. When becoming a teacher, Cochran was able to look back at her high school experience and see what she respected in her experience. Since she was able to view her current colleagues as teachers, she was able to see what type of teaching style she wanted to demonstrate upon becoming a teacher.
