By Keith Boles - bio | email feedback
JONESBORO, ARKANSAS (KAIT) --Whether you are a teacher in a public or private school, you are special. Each month our viewers nominate one of the best and highlight your choice.
November's Teacher of the Month teaches at Blessed Sacrament Catholic School in Jonesboro. Let me introduce to you, second grade teacher Helen Noworyta.
Unless you knew Helen Noworyta's background, you wouldn't know she's still a relative rookie in the teaching profession.
Noworyta, "I have been teaching for five years and I have been teaching for three years at Blessed Sacrament and I taught for two years at other schools. One of them here in Arkansas and the other was in Indiana."
Noworyta's calm manner in her classroom defines her style. "It really depends on what their personalities are like and I just modify to how their personalities are." Never raising her voice, Noworyta moves around her classroom answering questions and helping a student with a raised hand in the air. She says her students like it calm. "That's how I teach this class here in just a very calm way."
Of course, Blessed Sacrament is a Catholic School. I asked Noworyta how teaching school there differed from a public school. She says there are a couple of differences.
"If there's some thing wrong we get to pray about it and reflect on the problem. We get to discuss our faith in school about religion and we get to go to church every single week and that's just a blessing to me. "
The other big difference she says, is the amount of contact with her students and her student's families.
"Public schools. " She says, "You didn't get to see your parents or your students out of school at all. But here we see them at church or at the store and we see them a lot more because it's a lot smaller and we see a lot more people outside."
One big question I wanted answered was what she thought the best part of teaching second grade was.
Noworyta, " Second grade you get to dig in and teach them all sorts of new things about grammar, new things in math. Just challenges and it's so much fun to see them learn and grow."
Compared to many public classrooms, Noworoyta's class is sort of small with only 17 students.
"I think having more would be great too. I just think it depends on the class and if you have more children, that's just great."
"Do you like your job?"
Noworoyta, "I love my job. It's a lot of fun and the kids make your day so bright and happy."
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