We spoke with several members of the Masterman teaching community. Two interviews highlighted here are with a current teacher at Masterman, and an incoming teacher at Masterman.
"I’m excited to experience that rich mixture of diversity of the student body"
When asked what drew him to Masterman, the incoming teacher replied, "What attracted me to the school is the diversity. I am really excited about that. It is incredibly diverse." He followed by saying, "I’m excited to experience that rich mixture of diversity of the student body." He was one of many people who commented about Masterman's diversity. He said he was also looking forward to the challenge of working with "highly motivated students" and having them push him to "incorporate the highest level critical thinking into [his] lessons." When we asked a current teacher to describe the students at Masterman he said "The kids are typically kind and pretty aware of their unique situation of attending a school with others who want to learn." From our conversations and research into Masterman we saw students that were motivated, and diverse.
We asked what changes the current teacher has seen over the years at Masterman and he replied "we've lost so many teachers because of budget cuts," but he said this challenge "caused our parent group to be far more proactive in providing opportunities for the students - parents volunteer in the building all of the time." He said this actually ends up helping in building communication with students' families.
When asked about the relationship between the school and the neighborhood, a current teacher commented that "We exist in the Fairmount neighborhood, but I don't think we're an important part of the community. Because we pull kids from all zip codes, we're not really considered a neighborhood school, and that's reflected in our relationship to the community." We found this to be in line with the other conversations we had with Masterman and surrounding neighborhood community members.
We asked what changes the current teacher has seen over the years at Masterman and he replied "we've lost so many teachers because of budget cuts," but he said this challenge "caused our parent group to be far more proactive in providing opportunities for the students - parents volunteer in the building all of the time." He said this actually ends up helping in building communication with students' families.
When asked about the relationship between the school and the neighborhood, a current teacher commented that "We exist in the Fairmount neighborhood, but I don't think we're an important part of the community. Because we pull kids from all zip codes, we're not really considered a neighborhood school, and that's reflected in our relationship to the community." We found this to be in line with the other conversations we had with Masterman and surrounding neighborhood community members.