Mustang teacher always knew her calling
MUSTANG — Marcy Calvert, Mustang Trails Elementary 2016-2017 teacher of the year, said she knew when she was a child that she would become a teacher.
Her mother taught vacation Bible school, and Calvert helped every year.
“I loved it,” she said. “I loved everything about it. I loved helping her organize the activities and helping the kids with their crafts. My favorite was that we did a lot of music with movement and activities.”
After high school, she put off college to have a family, enrolling at the University of Central Oklahoma when her own children were 2 and 5.
In all, she’s been in an elementary classroom for 19 years, nine of those at Mustang.
She taught first grade, but fell in love with kindergarten and prekindergarten.
“I just love the little kids,” she said. “I love the singing, the motions with the songs. I love this age. I love getting to bring stuff for them, and I get to do that year after year. Every year I have a new audience.”
Calvert explores her own 8 acres when she’s at home, collecting turtle shells, abandoned bird nests, pine cones and perhaps a snake skin to share with the class.
“They’re 5 and 6,” she said. “They love it.”
'Great Expectations'
Every grade level has challenges, but the chasm between the skill levels of children can be especially wide in kindergarten. Students who don’t go to prekindergarten often start behind their kindergarten classmates without the ability to tell letters from numbers. Other students walk in the door the first day knowing how to read.
“I have to have a climate of mutual respect so that the kids will feel safe to take a risk,” she said. “Some of them don’t know that they don’t know. That’s where Great Expectations comes in. We don’t laugh at other’s mistakes.”
Founded in Oklahoma in 1991, Great Expectations is a teaching and training model available to teachers across the state. It is guided by six basic principles: having high expectations of students; boosting teacher attitude and sense of responsibility; the belief that all children can learn; building self-esteem; fostering a climate of mutual respect; and increasing teacher knowledge and skill.
Calvert said she has as much fun coming to school as the kids.
“I just love teaching. I honestly do. It’s so hard right now, higher class sizes, buying my own supplies. But I wouldn’t trade it,” she said. “I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”
Calvert wants to forge relationships. Whether it’s a student who can’t stand for an insect to be stepped on or a little boy whose mother is in jail, who is angry and sometimes violent, Calvert stressed the importance of trust and love.
“When they leave my class, I want them to reach their full potential as a student, but my thing is, if they know I love them and care about them, then I have done my job.”