East Grand Rapids — If you’d asked Maddie Nagher and Ellie Hilgendorf about their career aspirations a year ago, elementary education wouldn’t have come up.
The two East Grand Rapids High School seniors were both planning to be business majors, figuring it was a safe and practical bet. But Betsy Kratt’s Cadet Teaching class has allowed them to not only discover their love for teaching, but get some hands-on experience in the field as well.
“When I first started, I definitely didn’t want to be a teacher,” Maddie said. “And then I took Cadet and I was like, ‘I have to be a kindergarten teacher.’”
Something clicked, Maddie said, when she started working in a classroom for the first time.
“I was like, ‘This is where I have to be.’”
The seniors-only Cadet Teaching class exposes students to the education field by having them spend time an hour a day, four days a week helping out a tenured teacher at one of the district’s three elementary schools — Breton Downs, Wealthy and Lakeside — or at the middle school.
Students can take the class for one or two semesters. Maddie and Ellie are in their second semester, and because they’ve both developed such a keen interest in teaching, they’ve made special arrangements to spend an extra hour a day at the elementary schools they’re working with.
‘Watching (students) get the problems right and the smile that it puts on their face, that’s the whole reason I want to be a teacher.’
— senior Maddie Nagher
“Me and Maddie are very involved,” Ellie said. “Some other (students) are just kind of there to have fun and enjoy their senior year, but me and Maddie are there to get experience for the rest of our lives and careers.”
Kratt said most of the cadets who come through the class aren’t as committed to careers in education as Maddie and Ellie — “but that’s not a bad thing,” she said.
“It’s good exposure,” Kratt said. “Take this class because it’s gonna be fun, and maybe you will love it.”
She added that many students realize through the class that teaching just isn’t for them, but that’s clearly not the case with Maddie and Ellie, who are both working with their former kindergarten teachers. Maddie spends her cadet time assisting Shannon Brady at Lakeside Elementary, and Ellie is with Kerry McKee at Wealthy.
Doing the Work
Because McKee has been on leave recently, Ellie has been spending a lot of her time on administrative tasks, helping McKee’s sub with paperwork, working with small groups of students and leading about one lesson a week.
For Maddie, every day is different, but the bulk of her time is spent on actual teaching, under Brady’s supervision.
“Two days a week I teach a math lesson and then a science lesson,” Maddie said. “My teacher gives me the scripted notes and then I get to put it into my own little lesson plan.”
She said math lessons take around 15 minutes, while she tends to spend up to 45 minutes on science lessons.
“It’s very interactive,” Maddie said.
Ellie has found a kind of sociological value in teaching. She loves observing her students, and seeing how they interact with each other and with the world around them.
“It’s just kind of watching kids’ behaviors — that’s been my favorite part,” she said. “Like, how they pick who they’re friends with, and what their level of embarrassment is. The social aspect of kindergarten is, like, really fun to watch.”
For Maddie, the highlight is seeing her work with students pay off.
“My favorite thing is the growth,” Maddie said. “Watching them get the problems right and the smile that it puts on their face — that’s the whole reason I want to be a teacher.”
‘Another set of hands’
SNN stopped by Lakeside to see Maddie in action in Brady’s class.
Brady has been teaching for more than 20 years and has been working with cadets from the high school for as long as she’s been able to. For the past few years, she’s had her own former kindergarten students return to her classroom to help her out.
She’s a big fan of the program, and she’s happy to have Maddie’s help.
“It’s another set of hands, and in kindergarten there are so many needs,” Brady said. She’s grateful to the Cadet Teaching class for giving EGRHS students a chance to learn firsthand if teaching is for them, before jumping into the field.
She said Maddie is great with her students.
“They look up to her, they admire her and they see her as a trusted adult,” Brady said.
Her kindergartners didn’t dispute that one bit, and two of them — Abby Lorden and Nathan Billmeier — chimed in to sing Maddie’s praises as well.
“She’s fun,” Abby said of Maddie. “She plays fun games with us.”
“She’s really kind,” added Nathan.
Thanks to their time in Cadet Teaching, both Maddie and Ellie feel confident about taking the next step on the path to becoming teachers, and they believe their experience in the class is going to give them an edge as they head to college.
Maddie’s going to study K-6 elementary education at Grand Valley State University in the fall, while Ellie will focus on K-2 at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio.
“I’m really excited to go in and already know what I’m doing,” Ellie said.
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