The Newberg Graphic continues its series following three new Newberg teachers - David Masenhimer, Alison Hudson and Monica Barry.
By Laurent Bonczijk, The Newberg Graphic

David Masenhimer

David Masenhimer started teaching this year. He uses wit and humor to keep the students engaged and well behaved in this eighth-grade reading class. Before he started the year as a new teacher at Mountain View Middle School, David Masenhimer had vowed to keep order in his class because it benefits learning.

He has kept that promise. During an eighth-grade reading class before winter break, 28 students filled desks in his classroom; they were aligned neatly in both directions, thanks to small pieces of tape Masenhimer affixed to the floor. One student was a bit too eager to answer questions. He was warned. He was warned again. Then he had to go sit outside the door.

Masenhimer expects his students to not only answer in complete sentences, but to wait to be prompted. For a class filled with nearly 30 mostly pre-pubescent students, it appeared calm and organized. Students took turns reading out loud and while Masenhimer encouraged them through the words and sentences they had trouble pronouncing, their peers didn’t goad them, nor were there whispers.

The students were finishing reading a text selected specially for their reading level about the explosion of Mount Vesuvius and the ensuing destruction of Pompeii.

“If you knew you were on volcanic soil would you live there?” Masenhimer asked his students. The consensus was no, with a few boys displaying bravado and claiming that they surely would.

As Masenhimer asked questions, he clearly chose students who were more apt to answer them. While some students nearly always raised their hands to answer, he directed easier questions at some and harder ones at others. While the entire class is made up of eighth grade students, there is a large disparity among them. Some of the boys look like they already need to shave while others don’t seem to have grown much since elementary school.

The hardest part for the students is the vocabulary, Masenhimer said after class. Thankfully, the text comes with notes and definitions for words the students are unlikely to have encountered before. The book was part of a district-wide curriculum adopted to homogenize reading and writing instruction.

After shepherding his classes through state testing in the fall, Masenhimer said, “I’m trying to figure out the fine line between taking credit for high achieving students and what’s their innate capability.”

Masenhimer said he sees it as his role as a teacher to maintain a strict attitude in the classroom when it comes to discipline and turning work in on time. “It is my job as the teacher to teach kids that they’re going to have to do things in life that (they) don’t like to because if you don’t, things aren’t going to turn out well,” he said.

He has begun to change his delivery between different classes and while he assigns the same work to two different groups, he has learned that what’s a hit with one group of students who diligently follow instructions can quickly turn into a nightmare in a class with a different dynamic. Since September he has become much more aware of the different groups’ dynamics.

Alison Hudson

“I feel like I can breathe, which is nice,” said Alison Hudson. She teaches at Chehalem Valley Middle School in the morning and at Newberg High School in the afternoon. She started the school year as a soccer coach; now that the season is over she has a little bit more time to herself: “I’ve even been able to get a gym membership.”

“I think everything I do from now on will be a little bit easier because I’ve done it before,” she said as she looked forward to this term. “I’m starting to plan further in advance.” She likes to arrive at Chehalem Valley before the students so she can prepare and to stay at NHS in the afternoon to grade. Just like Masenhimer, she’s learned to adjust her assignments to each class and whether they’re better suited for group work or individual work.

Her math class was challenged by fractions, she said, with a large number of students failing the test. First she paired passing students with failing students, then she retested them. There still was a large number who didn’t understand how to add, subtract, multiply and divide fractions.

So she broke the test down by operation and students were required to pass one test before attempting the next. Instead of two-thirds of the class failing, only eight students still had problems.

“Eight is a more manageable group of students” for her to meet one-on-one with and help through the material, she said.

“It’s hard to comprehend why they didn’t understand it,” she said about when students don’t get a lesson. Hopefully the first time through she’s built a foundation that they can use when she explains the material again.

Monica Barry

“I feel a little frantic right now,” Monica Barry said as she sat in her second grade classroom at Edwards Elementary School. She said that with the winter break approaching she was suddenly hit by the realization that the school year was almost halfway over.

She said she considers herself lucky that since September she’s only added one new student to a class of 25, when other colleagues have had to handle eight or nine students joining or leaving their classrooms. She’s a bit nervous about the second semester, but the fact that she’s a teacher is starting to sink in and she is enjoying it.

“Wow, I’m really doing this. I’m really a teacher,” she said.