Reporter: Abby Weiss
@AWeissCourant
Picture this: You have just graduated from college and you, along with thirty other people, are having lunch with Barack Obama. Not many can say they’ve had this experience, but history teacher Michael Joshi has. The room goes silent as his boss, the future president of the United States, stands up and asks one question: what is it you want to do with your life? With a major in political science, he confidently answers, “I want to be in politics.” Obama’s reply to everyone is one of utter disappointment. No one said they wanted to be a teacher.
This was the moment when Mr. Joshi found his inspiration to teach. “He was disappointed that no one said that they wanted to be a teacher, Obama believes making a difference in the world is done by teaching,” Mr. Joshi said. He vividly remembers Mr. Obama’s reaction to this day, and it has stuck with him as motivation.
But, his teaching career did not start right away. Before he became a teacher, Mr. Joshi has also took on a career in Congress. He worked as a legislative correspondent for representative Jan Schakowsky near Capitol Hill. “I would staff my boss at committee hearings and markups and also would write speeches for her around issues that I was in charge of covering,” Mr. Joshi said. He then went on to campaign for a house race and then worked in a non-profit organization that ran the Truth Campaign. After all this, he finally realized that he wanted to become a teacher.
Although he has only been here for only two months, Mr. Joshi is already very well-known at NCHS, teaching AP Government, Civics, and US History. His path to teaching started at Columbia University and then onto a couple schools in New York City such as the Bronx, Washington Heights, and Brooklyn. Although, Brooklyn was his first full-time teaching job, Mr. Joshi learned a lot on how to create a positive learning environment for teachers and kids. He describes the experience as, “I didn’t see half the students because they wouldn’t come to school, but the one’s that did it were just trying to figure what is a successful future for them and helping them with that.”
Mr. Joshi took away a lot from the experience and developed as a teacher. “Even though I was only there for a year, I loved it and it taught me how important teacher-student relationship was,” he said.
Mr. Joshi wants to have a positive impact on the lives of his students and makes it a priority to prevent his students from stressing out too much. He says, “My goal everyday is to have fun. I really love the subject matter that I’m teaching and the students seem into it.” The classes he’s currently teaching are US History, AP Government, and Civics.
Senior Maddie Smith, a student in his AP Government class, feels that Mr. Joshi has already impacted her life in the short time he’s been with her. She said, “He is one of my favorite teachers because he genuinely respects his student and truly cares about their success. He wants to know how we are doing, wants to make his class fun, and wants to keep us interested.”
Mr. Joshi also encourages students to speak their mind and have class discussions in order to learn. He claims that if you have a strong opinion and are able to argue for it, you will improve in his class. “It’s great especially in Government class to have students that have strong beliefs because if you don’t have a strong belief,” he said. “Then you can’t be challenged on it at all.”
Robert Stevenson, Social Studies Department Chair, feels that Mr. Joshi encompasses many good qualities that make him a great new addition to the department. He says, “It’s a combination of confidence, knowledge, humor and presence that we loved instantly about Mr. Joshi.” Mr. Stevenson also views his experience in Congress as one of the ways he makes a unique and positive addition to the school. “He brings that practical experience actually in the trenches of government getting it done. All of us can talk and teach about the theory of government and how it’s supposed to work, he can also speak about the realities of getting the job done in Washington,” he said.
One of Mr. Joshi’s favorite memories of high school is being part of his band, Five Alive which was created based on his run-in with Beyoncé at a concert. “So my summer going into junior year of high school, me and three friends went to a concert in Kansas city. The headliner was Christina Aguilera and before her was Destiny’s Child and before them was an opening band,” he said. When the opening band came out to sing he said, “They asked three people from the crowd to come up and so me and my two other friends got chosen. The girl who picked me was the lead singer and she brought me to the middle of the stage.” Although he danced in front of ten thousand people, the best part is was happened after. “I was walking back to my seat and standing just offstage is Beyoncé. I swear she was smiling at me and my friends, and they swear that she was laughing at me. I think she winked but that could’ve been just my imagination,” he said. After, him and his friends created a boy band where they wrote and recorded a song to perform in front of the school.
Although this is not a typical high school experience, all aspects of his life have lead him to be the teacher that is commended by many of his students. “I’m so happy I have him as a teacher this year. I am truly excited to go to class everyday because of him,” Maddie Smith said.
