Gwynne Tenney, Reporter
@gtenneycourant
As the trumpets begin to blare their rehearsed melody, a young Megan McCauley hurls a color guard rifle into the air, concentrating vigorously on catching it when it comes back down to meet her. At that time, she didn’t know that less than ten years later, she would be concentrating just as hard on grading five-paragraph essays and symbolic analyses.
For many students at NCHS Ms. McCauley is a new face and name. This is not only her first year teaching at NCHS as one of the new english teachers, but it’s her first time teaching high school students. “I taught preschool, and I loved it so much, but I didn’t necessarily love being with three year olds for eight hours a day,” she said. “I really wanted to be doing secondary level, which was the 7-12 [grades]that I teach now.”
Once she realized that teaching was the career she wanted to pursue, Ms. McCauley attended Western Connecticut State University in Danbury before moving on to student teaching. “I did my student teaching in New Milford, just a little bit north of Danbury,” she said. “It was my first time being in a high school not as a
student. I think it’s a lot of fun, I really like the material that we’re able to do and how high schools are really able to dive into the material more so than at the middle school level.”
However, Ms. McCauley didn’t always want to be a teacher. In fact, she grew up thinking just the opposite. “I actually grew up saying that I didn’t want to be a teacher because my mom was one, and I never wanted to step into the same footsteps as her,” she said. “I always saw how late she was getting home and I was like, ‘I don’t want that to be me.’”
Her mother’s love for teaching must be hereditary, because soon enough Ms. McCauley realized that she could overlook the late nights and hauling papers to begin her teaching career.
Senior Lyndsey Duane feels as though Ms. McCauley’s kind nature is an important part of her encouraging classroom atmosphere. Lyndsey said, “she’s really sweet, really kind. She’s very responsible even though she’s a young teacher, which is really something you rarely see.”
Because of her age Ms. McCauley is easy to connect with and loved by her students. Experiencing high school and college throughout the digital age gave Ms. McCauley the upper hand in working with students of the same era. “I understand the pressures that are under a lot of students with social media and this really fast-paced world,” she said. “I’m kind of on that same page as a lot of students are right now, and that helps me to understand what we can do to benefit everybody.”
Although she believes in the importance of connecting to students through technology, Ms. McCauley strongly believes that English class can be an amazing experience, and that she can help get her students to that point. “The fact that I love literature and reading and writing so much is something that really inspires them to go forward and really dive into a book and connect with a character and learn to love that like I do,” Ms. McCauley said.
Part of the reason why students of Ms. McCauley find her so relatable is that one of her favorite activities outside of school is watching Netflix. “It sucks me in every time,” she said. Ms. McCauley’s interest in the film field has even inspired her teaching in the Literature and Film class offered to seniors. “I enjoy movies. I’ve worked at a couple independent movies in the past couple of years,” she said.
Ms. McCauley admits that she loves J.K. Rowling and connects to her because of their similar ‘trial and error’ experiences while finding their place in the professional world. However, it seems that Ms. McCauley finally feels at home here at NCHS. “I’m absolutely enjoying my time here. I love it so much,” she said. “Everybody has been so welcoming and so nice: students, teachers, administration. I’ve felt very welcomed so far and I’m looking forward to the rest of the year.”
