The news site of Verona High School

The Fairviewer

The news site of Verona High School

The Fairviewer

The news site of Verona High School

The Fairviewer

VHS Welcomes New History Teacher

 “I desperately wanted to be a Hillbilly,” jokes Melissa Wallerstein, who has begun to teach AP Government and United States History at VHS. “I was jealous.”  She is talking about her transition from being a Cedar Grove Panther to a Verona Hillbilly.

 With this being her tenth year of teaching, Mrs.Wallerstein is no stranger to the classroom.  She has taught AP Government, World History, United States History II, AP United States History, and Human Behavior.  She has experience not only at Cedar Grove but at Summit High School.

Before her teaching career began, Mrs. Wallerstein worked as an acquisitions editor for a text book publishing company- she traveled to various colleges, convincing professors to write textbooks on subjects such as geoscience and psychology.  Observing  professors and teachers in their job environments made her realize she knew she had to do something different.  “I was jealous of their teaching experiences,” she says with a shrug and a glimmer of a smile.

Inspired by this, Mrs. Wallerstein took teaching certification classes at Montclair State University and began her career as a teacher’s assistant at Montclair High School.

Compared to Montclair’s near 2,000 student population, Mrs. Wallerstein says she prefers smaller schools like Verona’s.  “I like knowing all the students” she says, explaining that children tend to learn better when the teacher knows them personally.

Being an AP Government teacher during an election year is exciting to Mrs.Wallerstein, but it’s not as easy for the teacher as students may think.

“The students are sharp,” she says. “You have to stay on top of everything whether you like it or not. If they have a complicated question, you as a teacher have to know the answer.”

Even if it means watching the news before and after school, reviewing events and treaties of our nation’s history, brushing up on every article of the United States Constitution, or researching the many factors that can influence this year’s election, Mrs. Wallerstein does it all for her students.

When it comes to her teaching style, Wallerstein admits that she has “embraced the Power Point” and finds it easier to teach with a projector.  With pictures, cartoons, and links to educational websites, the slides in Mrs. Wallerstein’s Power Point presentations are
designed to hold the attention of a teenage student.

“It really keeps me on track; I mainly use it as an outline of the lesson for the day, then I fill in the blanks and get the students involved in a discussion.”

She believes that overall, technology is beneficial to students as opposed to harmful.  Research is at the student’s fingertips- all they need to be do is type a few keystrokes and information appears almost instantly.  But there is always the issue of plagiarism.

“The impulse to cheat is always there, that’s why I think educators try to separate the students from technology,” Mrs. Wallerstein says.  Technology when used correctly can be helpful to a student in that there are many useful resources on the internet.  Mrs. Wallerstein believes that technology such as phones and the internet are portrayed in a bad light by teachers because these teachers are only looking at the negative aspects.  “It’s a distraction really, but I think many teachers like to blow it out of proportion.”

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