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Natalie Wright is the new social studies teacher and U.S government teacher at NS. Starting next semester, she will teach world history as well.
While Wright has taught preschool, worked as a substitute teacher, and been an instructional assistant, this is her first year teaching specific classes in a high school setting.
“I was really nervous about teaching U.S. government,” Wright said. “History is not my strong point yet, but I’m enjoying it more than I thought.”
The State of Utah Board of Education provides core standards and a curriculum for the class, but also provides a lot of freedom of choice for what Wright chooses to teach or dive deeper into from the curriculum due to the amount of content the students need to learn and the small amount of time to learn it.
“I’ve decided to focus more on students being able to use this information in their life,” Wright said. “Like what do I need to know about U.S government as a 40-something-year-old adult? I need to know how to register to vote, how to vote, and how to find those politicians I vote for. I need to know what the laws are, and what my rights are. And so instead of memorizing places and times and dates and people, I’ve decided to focus more on how you use that information.”
Growing up, Wright went to a very small elementary school with only three teachers teaching all six classes.
“It was a different environment,” Wright said. “As I’ve gotten older I’ve realized how amazing those teachers are. They were elementary, they had to teach all subjects and they had multiple classes to prepare for and so I think ‘I can do my part, it’s not near the challenges they had.’”
While teaching multiple classes at once would have its own challenges, these teachers still managed to create several meaningful class experiences Wright found very valuable.
“One time we had a super awesome reading day,” Wright said. “It was going to be in Hawaii and transformed our class into a little paradise and all the other grades participated. So we went down in the basement in the rec-room and pretended to be on an airplane. When we’d come up, all the leis we’d made the other classes put on our necks and the lunch lady had all these exotic fruits to try. And then we went, and we probably only read for a couple hours after we did all that, but I’ve never seen anything like that in any other school I’ve been in.”
These kinds of creative activities inspired Wright to incorporate her own creative, hands-on activities into the classes she’s teaching at NS.
“I think U.S Government is the perfect subject to be able to do really hands-on [activities],” Wright said, “have my students create a bill and go through the process, make our own government where we practice, there’s a lot of hands-on opportunities.”
Although being a new teacher is a big adjustment, Wright is very thankful for all the staff’s support and the students’ patience as she figures out how she wants to go about teaching her class“I’ve found that I love it here,” Wright said. “The support and the welcome has been amazing…And the students have been forgiving. I’ve told them ‘You probably know more about this than I do, let’s work together. Know that I’m going to make mistakes and I know that you’ll make mistakes but if we just work through it together, we will learn.’ It’s been an amazing school, I’m excited to be here.”
