New teachers in school

It’s fitting that new Pittsburg USD 250 teacher Amy Hullet is teaching kindergarten. As a first-year teacher herself, she’ll be entering the classroom on her own with an equal measure of wonder and excitement as her young students.

Hullet is one of 23 new teachers in the district who are starting their stints in Pittsburg this fall, and she’s excited to get started. Originally from Bentonville, Ark., she moved with her family to Monroe, N.Y., where her father, Archie, took a job when she was in high school. Archie’s company, Martinous Produce, brought the family to Pittsburg a few years ago, and after an unpleasant year at Southwest Baptist University, she decided to transfer to Pittsburg State University.

“It was close to home and affordable, and I heard great things about the teaching program,” Hullet said Thursday afternoon as she worked on setting up her classroom.

Teaching always seemed like her destiny, Hullet said. She played school with friends when she was young, and when she was in high school she worked in the school’s day care center and for after school programs.

“They’re such amazing little beings and you don’t expect that much out of them,” Hullet said. “But they can really surprise you.”

Hullet was a student teacher for a third grade class, and she thought that’s where she’d end up, but the idea of teaching kindergarten grew on her.

“Everything is so fun in kindergarten,” she said. “And a lot of the things you get to do, things like learning to stand in line and sit in a circle on the floor, are so fun for them. I’ve really fallen in love with it.”

That doesn’t mean there won’t be challenges. Hullet said her first order of business, after she meets her students, of course, is to figure out the fundamentals of classroom management.

“If there’s chaos in here, they’re not going to feel safe and they’re not going to respect me as an authority figure,” Hullet said. “That’s going to be the most important thing to learn.”

There will be fun times, too.

“It’s exciting to be able to take all the ideas from my practicum and be able to implement them and put my own spin on them,” Hullet said. “But you quickly learn what works and what doesn’t work.”

That won’t be as much of an issue for Adam Brown, a new fourth grade teacher at Lakeside Elementary School. Brown, who went to Pitt State from his hometown of Beloit, did his student teaching at Lakeside and has been a substitute teacher there for more than a year.

“I can’t really say I’m nervous yet, and I think subbing has prepared me,” Brown said as he was cutting out a poster board image of Charlie Brown, his classroom theme. “But that day will come, I’m sure.”

Brown said he decided he wanted to be a fourth grade teacher thanks to his own particularly inspiring fourth grade teacher.

“I like working with kids, and to be a male in this field, I want to be a positive role model for them. I also know I’m in a field where I can make a real difference and share what I know with this generation of kids.”

Substitute teaching allowed Brown to get to know a lot of the kids at Lakeside. But now he says he’ll have a chance to really connect with and get to know some of his students and their families.

“I’ll be more invested in them and be able to see them grow as the year progresses,” he said.

Brown said he decided to stay in Pittsburg because the residents of Pittsburg made him feel like a member of the family.

“The community is very welcoming and very supportive, and PSU embraces the students with open arms,” he said. “And the faculty and staff at Lakeside is great. And the community of the parents and kids, there aren’t enough good things to say about them. It makes Lakeside the place to be, in my opinion.”