Sitting in seven different classes every year makes it hard for a lot of students to grasp how a teacher really changes. As time passes, their style evolves as they build an understanding of what methods work, take inspiration from others and learn more about the current generation of students.
“I’d be a very bad teacher if I never changed,” Junior High history teacher Mrs. Leslie Porges said. “I just didn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater—I kept the stuff that worked and I came up with new stuff,” she said. “Some of it worked, and some of it didn’t.”
Mrs. Porges has been teaching at Heritage for 26 years, and since her first years of chalkboards and paper textbooks, much is different nowadays.
“When I started there were no computers … things were simpler. It was slower, not as much was expected, it was easier to teach and it was easier to be a student,” she said.
Before Heritage, Mrs. Porges taught at an Arizona public school, “and there wasn’t a huge disparity [between there and Heritage,] she said. The school then wasn’t what it is now, but over time, it got better—and at the same time, she got better as a teacher.
“You either got better [with the school], or you found another job,” she explained.
However, as the students improved, it also made teaching much different.
“When we didn’t have so much for them to do, they were more happy to try new things,” said Mrs. Porges. She was constantly able to try new, fun learning methods to keep her classes engaged. “Now, they’re so overburdened—they’ve got two different sports, theater—that compared to back then where if you came up with a new thing they dove for it, now, they just can’t do something unusual.”
Then, after her first few years at the school, a big advancement in technology started to happen, “and it made everything different,” Mrs. Porges said. There seems to be a trend in teachers who started out using a traditional method, like teaching with a chalkboard every day: a sort of dislike towards—or a preference over the old—when it comes to modern methods and technology.
“Someone came in today and showed the kids how to find their textbooks,” Mrs. Porges said. “So she went through all of this stuff and I’m thinking ‘I won’t be able to find it,’ and I’m not sure [the kids] will either … It used to be just opening a book.”
“Technology is a mixed blessing … and I’ve looked at the games and I’ve looked at the [educational] videos—there aren’t many of them that are good,” she said. She does agree there are a few good resources, but it’s things like documentaries that are hard to watch in class.
“You can’t let the kids have iPads, and you can’t let me have an iPad. You put an iPad in front of me when there’s somebody talking, and I listen with one ear and I shop, or I plan a vacation or I read the newspaper.”
Mrs. Porges doesn’t see herself using AI for education either, explaining she thinks it’s great for other purposes, “but I don’t think you should give it to kids … I think a lot of the information [AI gives you] isn’t any good. So no, I’m not enamored.”
Today, she still teaches the way she did years ago, “I stand up there and I write on the board and I tell stories and make them take notes. They think it’s unusual … and they think ‘Hey, this is a cool way to learn.’ simply because nobody else does it.”
When becoming a teacher, she was taught she had no choice but to know all the material in and out—there was no way to cut corners. And, especially today, this way of teaching sets an example for students too: that technology shouldn’t be used to cut corners.
“There were no PowerPoints—there was nothing,” she said. And by time people started using things like PowerPoint, “I already knew the stuff, and I don’t like making PowerPoints at all, so I still just teach that way.”
It was a similar situation with Mr. Mark Gruskin, a high school social studies teacher.
“For me, [the technology] is hard,” he said. While he admits there are some benefits, like making it easier to write notes, “I’m still more of a traditional teacher; I like to lecture, use a textbook, write on the board.”
And still, beyond technology, there are many lessons teachers learn that make up what they are today. For Mr. Gruskin, it was his childhood teachers.
“I had great teachers … they were eccentric, they were iconic—they were people who you’d always remember, who would entertain you, who would teach you. I wanted to be a lot like them.”
For Mrs. Porges, it was something similar. Along with experimenting with new things to see what worked, every year, she would go to the National History Day seminar for teachers, listening and learning from the teachers there.
“Somebody would say, ‘Well, try this,’” she said. “And this would work. That’s what made me better.”
And Mrs. Porges knew it worked, because students still always visit her and call her – she has always given them her number for people to call and ask questions – telling her what about her teaching helped, or just calling from Boston to tell her they’re at the place they learned about in class.
“Yeah,” Mrs. Porges joked, “Nobody seems to hate me.”
Mrs. Porges and her students at the National History Day national competition around 2005-2006. “That year, five projects went to [nationals],” she said. “The tall boy in the back is Matt Mariutto—he is the person who was honored, in 2007, for his National History Day documentary on Apollo 1.”
