Mrs. Rebecca Chill, an all round history teacher here, has been teaching for 13 years, all in which have been at West Po. She teaches a variety of subjects including AP US History, DE US History, AP World History, World history 1, on level History and a couple more history classes.
Mrs. Chill achieved a master’s in history and has always been interested in the subject. She pursued a career as a teacher so that she could balance work with spending time with her 6 children. She wanted to still be involved in their lives while working. At first, she had her doubts about teaching, believing that she wouldn’t be able to control a classroom. However, with the convenient schedule she began her career as a History teacher.
“Hopefully, if I’m teaching in a school where they go, I can kind of keep an eye on them. So that’s what I did, she said.
Mrs. Chill teaches grades 9th, 10th, and 11th. Her biggest challenge while starting off as a teacher was classroom management. She was able to overcome this by finding her style of teaching, which is adding humor to the lecture as well as being stern when needing to be. She enforces her rules and expectations right at the beginning of the year and gives consequences for those who aren’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing.
Her hope for what students will take away from her classes is for them to have some type of interest in history. She wants students to take away a bit of information that may inspire them in the future to pick a career in history.
“Hopefully If they’re ever in one of those shows that stick a microphone in their face and ask, “Who fought the civil war?”, they won’t say something stupid,” Mrs. Chill said.
Chill’s favorite memory of the class is when one of her students came after school to do a retake and said, “You know what Mrs. Chill, everyday is easy if you don’t try.” What’s even more ironic is he now works for the CIA, she said.
“No truer words were ever spoken,” Chill said.
