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No place like home for new Glenwood teacher
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Neighbors | Shaiyla Hakeem .Boardman Glenwood Middle School's Molly Piper talked to her enriched English class about short story assignments and group work. Piper has wanted to teach in Boardman since she was a child.
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Neighbors | Shaiyla Hakeem .Boardman native Milly Piper is Glenwood Middle School's new eighth-grade English teacher. She graduated from BHS in 2001.
By SHAIYLA HAKEEM
For new Boardman Glenwood teacher Molly Piper, it’s always been “once a Spartan, always a Spartan.”
The 2001 Boardman High School graduate is back in her home district, this time as the new eighth-grade English teacher at Glenwood Middle School.
Piper served as a substitute teacher at the school for a year until the permanent staff member, who had been on maternity leave, returned.
After that, she taught at East Palestine High School for four years. Now she’s back in Boardman.
“Mr. Alvino called me and said, ‘We have an opening’ and I came back running with open arms,” she said. “I love the Boardman school system.”
Piper earned a bachelor’s degree in secondary education from Ohio University and a master’s degree in curriculum instruction from Ashland University. She said teaching was always a priority for her and she wants to be able to see her students grow and learn under her instruction.
“It’s nice to be in a district where education is so important to the kids,” she said.
To keep her students engaged, Piper varies her lesson plans. If the class has been working from the textbook for a week, she will change the focus to a writing assignment or assign a novel to read. She also tries to give them choices as far as what they read and write about. Most of all, Piper wants to prepare her students for high school.
“I want them to come back to me after their freshman year and say, ‘thank you so much, I was so ready for school,’” she said.
Piper teaches four 56-minute blocks of English each day. In addition to reading classic novels such as “The Diary of Anne Frank” and “The Giver,” Piper’s students will learn writing skills, fundamentals of grammar and public speaking.
“I feel that no matter what line of work you go into you have to know how to speak to people,” she said.
Piper said she loved her education in the Boardman school system and though she had to teach in another district for some time, she was overjoyed to come back to her hometown.
She doesn’t see herself moving into an administrative position in future, but envisions herself doing what she enjoys the most.
“I have always wanted to teach in a classroom and I want to stay here until I retire,” Piper said.