IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Teacher Susan McKenzie eager to start her first year at TIS
There is a special place in Susan McKenzie’s heart for second-graders. She loves teaching all elementary grades, but second-graders have a “special wonderment” about them. “There is an excitement to learn and the ability to stretch themselves. I love to watch them grow.” This is what second-graders bring to this teacher, and she is happy to be starting her connection with The Island School by teaching second grade. She will have 14 students in her class.
“I can’t wait to see their faces,” she said with a laugh. “I have been poring over their names, so I feel I already know them. I was lucky enough to be able to visit the first-grade classroom on the last day of school last spring, so I actually have met the students already. I can’t wait to get to know each of them – the parents, too, of course, but it is the students I hope to know best.”
To Susan, the parents are part of her team. In order to know the students, she has to involve the parents, she said. One of her favorite ways to include parents is by making “the good phone calls,” as she calls them.
“I love to make the good phone calls. I love calling the parents and telling them how their son or daughter held the door for someone without any prompting, or how they shared some object or showed compassion. Those are the calls I love to make,” she said.
What is the one word that Susan uses to express her excitement with teaching this year at The Island School? “Incredible!”
“Just walking into the school gives me such a feeling of joy,” she said. “The staff has been so welcoming and helpful.”
Susan sounds a little giddy about school starting, but do not mistake that for being inexperienced. No, her excitement comes from the exact opposite – it comes from her experience of 23 years helping young children learn and grow. Susan started out teaching in the higher grades – 5th and 6th, and then moving into 3rd and 4th grades. She also taught kindergarten for three years, and this is her fourth year teaching second grade. It looks like a great fit.
“There is something wonderful in every grade,” she said, “but there is just something special about second-graders.” She likes giving the students experiences that are interesting as well as educational. She likes having special guests in her classroom, opening the students’ eyes to different kinds of jobs and learning experiences. One of her favorite guests is Pastor Matt – her husband – who plays the piano and knows a lot about computers. Susan has a friend who is an author, who will be invited to talk about different ways of writing. There may be a visit from a retired chemist she knows, as well.
Reading is also extremely important to Susan’s teaching. “It gives students a good foundation. I have a very large library in my classroom, with all kinds of books that will be available to the students,” she said.
“I like to share with students about different ways to see things and learn things. Even math problems may have different ways to come to the correct answer. I want them to be able to think things through for themselves.”
Being open to new opportunities and new approaches to life issues is not only a way of teaching for Susan, but a way of life. A case in point is her family’s decision to move to Florida.
“I love the four seasons,” she said. “I am the last one who thought I would want to live in Florida.” But they have now been in the Venice area for five-and-a-half years, and she is totally loving it.
“We all fell in love with this area,” she said. “In fact, there is nothing about this area we don’t love!”
When she talks about “all of them” falling in love with Southwest Florida, she is talking about her husband of 21 years, Matt; son Josiah, 15, who goes to Venice High School; and daughters Amelia, 12, and Ella Grace, 10, who both go to the Student Leadership Academy, a charter middle school in Venice that fosters service, community and leadership for its students – not unlike The Island School.
She and her family previously lived in Kentucky, in the area where Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia all come together. They lived for a while in North Carolina as well, and Susan has taught in all these areas. Today, no one in the family can imagine living anywhere other than Florida.
Susan has a B.A. degree in elementary education from Ohio University, and a master’s degree in elementary education from Morehead State University, in Kentucky. She is certified in elementary education, with endorsements in reading and teaching English to speakers of other languages.
Husband Matt is the worship arts pastor at First Baptist Church of Venice, leading the church’s music and technology ministries.
Susan took a few years off teaching when her children were very young, but she could not stay away from the educational environment. She worked closely with a charter school that was just getting started, helping to develop policies and approaches to the educational programs.
One of Susan’s special areas of teaching was in what is called the “inclusion model,” which allows students of varying degrees of development to work together in a classroom without calling attention to differences in learning abilities.
“It is challenging for a teacher to have students with special needs along with others of standard abilities and even gifted abilities all in the same classroom without having the students identify in any way but as students,” she said.
Susan enjoyed that challenge and felt it served all the students well to simply be fellow students, all learning at their own levels. She found this challenge “fun,” and was immersed in that sort of teaching for three years. She believes this experience broadened her own capability of working with children of all learning levels.
Susan McKenzie brings a broad range of skills to her classroom at The Island School. Her enthusiasm and excitement at teaching second grade are gifts to her students. In return, she feels she is being gifted by being able to teach at such a great school.
“I am just so grateful for the opportunity to be here. I am so very impressed with the structure of the school and how it operates and supports the children. It is really exciting for me.”
