Jeff Hayes, who had been the Advanced Placement US History (APUSH) teacher at Pitman High School for more than 20 years, resigned after just a few weeks into this school year.
It is unclear to students why Hayes left, however, his leave triggered a plethora of changes in the US History Department.
For the longest time, Graham Thomas and Andy Walker taught US History classes alongside Hayes who also taught APUSH. When Hayes left the APUSH kids were left without a teacher.
Currently, Jacob Copple has been hired to teach Hayes’ classes; however, the reason as to why he is not teaching APUSH is unclear as he did not answer interview questions via email or in-person.
As such, after (hopefully) much discussion, a decision was made: starting the second quarter, the APUSH students transferred to either Thomas’ or Walker’s classes and their current students would go to Copple’s.
The official reasoning and decision making process has not been disclosed to us as our principal, Angela Freeman, declined our interview request.
As per the switch, Thomas’ and Copple’s first period classes swapped and Walker’s and Copple’s second period classes swapped.
This would mean that Copple, Thomas, Walker and all their students would start the second quarter afresh with new faces.
A “switch” like this has happened only a handful of times in Pitman’s history- but never mid-semester.
“Never happened to me in my 24 years of teaching,” comments Walker.
“Not that I can recall,” adds Thomas.
Walker is nervous but excited for this new challenge; he reported finding out about the switch a few weeks prior to the end of the 1st quarter.
He believes that his students will have no trouble adjusting to their new classes as they are pretty adaptable. “They are in good hands with Copple.”
Even though he is sad to say goodbye to his old students, he hopes that the transition will be smooth overall.
As for his teaching, Walker adds that the switch will cause hiccups in the fluidity in his teaching. “I am teaching a new curriculum and skills to different students. In APUSH, we are covering units more in-depth and faster than we are in traditional U.S History.”
“I’m super excited! I’ve always been interested in teaching AP, and I’m thrilled to finally get the chance! I got confirmation about three weeks ago.” adds Thomas.
Thomas gave a heartfelt response when asked about his thoughts on losing his first period class: “I was honestly bummed out… [they] were shaping up to be a truly outstanding class.
“Several students told me they didn’t take AP this year in hopes they would get me as a teacher – and part of me really feels bad that it might seem like I’m abandoning them.”
He confessed that, “One of the real challenges for me will be adapting my style of teaching to something more useful to an AP student. My goal is to make history fascinating, relevant, and even entertaining at times.”
Thomas says that he is okay with the situation. “I’ve never done [this] before, so obviously it’s not ideal – but after 2 or 3 weeks it will all seem normal (I hope).”
When asked if he relies on information given to his students in the first quarter, Thomas commented, “Very much so.”
Thomas would describe the situation as unprecedented, but exciting.
“I’m only worried because I have no experience in AP History. So that means I have to learn all the basics that everyone else has already learned,” says Aagam Kaur, junior and a student of Copple’s who is switched to Walker’s.
Based on her experience in Copple’s class, Kaur says that, “Copple is discussion-based and gives both sides of the argument. As long as I’m able to have what I need for the AP exam I’m good with the switch.”
Aagam chooses to describe the situation as chaotic.
“We’ve had so many teachers – and this is only the third month of school. I guess the administration was scrambling for another teacher since Hayes was the only APUSH teacher.”
When asked to describe Hayes’ teaching, Kaur reported that “Hayes would have a slide show and quickly go through it and skip details and would tell us to do all of the work at home.”
She continues, “We would come back the next day and without reviewing [the material] it was time for the test and I would not remember anything. I realized ‘Was this even on the notes?’”
Kaur prefers Copple’s teaching style overall. Now that she is leaving his class, she hopes to get comfortable with sharing her opinions during group discussions.
We then interviewed a student of Walker’s, Aubrey Schuppert, a junior. The first question asked was, how do you feel about the switch? “I don’t like it. I found out about it— I think a week ago.”
Schuppert was very optimistic about Walker’s class.“It’s my favorite class! He teaches well. He’s like a visual teacher and that’s what I like. He’s really good and explains stuff very well.”
“I know there are other students in my class who don’t want to switch because we’ve talked about him and we like him.”
We then interviewed the same two people after the switch to get further insight. We wanted to see how they were doing, if their predictions were right or wrong, and if the switch went smoothly.
Schuppert reports that, “It was just like the first day of school. He talked about himself the entire period and then we reviewed what we learned last week with Walker.”
She describes Copple’s teaching as discussions based: “He’s very interactive with the crowd.”
On the other hand, Kaur describes the first day of being in Walker’s class as a good experience.
“[Walker] gave us the structure of how his class is going to be and he covered the agenda of what we’re going to be doing and how he’s going to run the class since he’s our fourth teacher.”
Much to her surprise the switch went well for her, it was smooth. “We’re starting a new unit, it’s not like we’re running over the previous unit we’re working on. So I guess that we will have to go through it ourselves. We started a new unit when we got there.”
The difference between Copple’s and Walker’s teaching is that Walker is less discussion-based. “We do our notes and work at home then the next day we go over the notes,” Kaur says.
Overall, a mid-semester switch hasn’t happened in Pitman for years as both Thomas and Walker confirmed. However, it’s great to hear that both parties—the students and the teachers—have adapted well in getting to know each other.