WRITTEN BY JILL LUNA
Matthew McMillin is one of our beloved teachers here at VAAS. Mr. McMillin shares the origins of his teaching style, his perspective on the state of VAAS, plans for the future, and thoughts on past decisions based on an interview conducted by Michael McKnight. When asked about how his teaching style came to be, Mr. McMillin stated, “I feel like I borrow so much from everybody that I’ve ever worked with. I originally student-taught with Mr. Harris (one of VAAS's founders and current English teachers), that was eight or nine years ago. …Harris influenced…how I…have class discussions a lot. I took a lot of information from him. The next teacher that…that I student-taught for was …really creative about how they did projects and how they set up their classroom. They were moving their chairs around everyday and they would constantly have the kids move the desks and stuff, and I’ve adopted that too. So, I love moving my room around and that’s just something that I borrowed.” Our interviewer, Michael, asked Mr. McMillin his opinion on the current state of our school, to which he said, “I think the school [is] doing well. In a lot of ways. It was hard coming back from Covid, and I think everybody’s still feeling that. I think there’s a lot of students and a lot of staff that still are…kind of shaky on it. …I was going through some of my older stuff from 2017, 2016, 2015, teaching things from back then, and I was like ‘Oh my gosh, I used to do this.’ I forgot what that was like, part of my class and my normal stuff. So, I think that’s a big thing …we’re all kind of coming back from(Covid), but I think overall we’re all doing really well.” Now addressing the issue of graffiti tagging at the school, Mr. McMillin shared his thoughts by saying, “…Tagging is an interesting thing, because in so many ways, art is supposed to be accepted, supposed to be something everybody gets to experience, but then it becomes intrusive, and that’s hard to balance. I think it’s hard to teach students to balance it. It’s really hard to tell students ‘Hey, stop painting.’. …It’s like telling students to stop writing. It’s like it’s a skill that you should be practicing and yet, here they are, not able to do it, and it’s a weird balance. It’s a weird structure. I think it just comes down to like property… This isn’t yours, so you can’t use it that way.” When asked how other schools compare to VAAS, Mr. McMillin answered, “...I really got to experience what really makes this school unique. As far as how they approach everything, I think there’s a different level of freedom for students to kind of explore whatever they want to. There is a little more leniency as far as…trust in students being able to be more mature and more interpersonal, …communication with each other and with teachers. …I think it’s a really unique way that everybody does things here. You look at other schools and what’s making them more successful now, is that they’re adapting to all the stuff that made us really good in the first place. So when I was here a long time ago, it was pretty unique to have an iPad in your hand and be able to work with that. That wasn’t something you saw. Now every school has that or is trying to have that, and trying to make it work. We’re kind of ahead of the curve that way, and I think we have been for a long time. I like being here because of that.” Afterward, our interviewer Michael asked Mr. McMillin what his plans were for the future, to which he said, “...keep teaching, keep working. I enjoy this job. …I enjoy teaching. I set out into this career originally thinking that if there was a point where I ever didn’t like the students, I was gonna leave, 'cause …I had teachers that really didn’t like students growing up and they hurt students because of it. I never wanted to be that teacher. I knew that, as I’m in this career, if I burn out or at some point really hate what I’m doing, I’m not gonna do it anymore. I’m gonna try to find something else, ‘cause I don’t want to be that person that is gonna injure students’ futures because of my behavior, and I think that that’s kind of where I am. …I enjoy it and I’m willing to do it.” Lastly, Mr. McMillin was asked if he were to change a past decision, what would it be and why. He answered, “A lot of decisions that I don’t like, I don’t think that I would change anything because I think that’s kind of what brought me where I am. I’m not necessarily a big believer in faith. I don’t think that people …have a course that they’re set on. I think that your individual small decisions actually really matter a lot more than big ones. …I don’t necessarily have anything that I would wanna go back and change because it brought me here, and I really like my life now. I wouldn’t risk losing that.” Comments are closed.
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