This year, Berkeley Preparatory School welcomes Hannah Taylor to the Upper Division History and Religious Studies department! Specifically, Taylor teaches ninth-grade world history and eleventh-grade U.S. History.
Over the course of her nearly seven-year teaching career—including one year spent working in China—Taylor has come to realize that her favorite high school class to teach is ninth-grade history. She explained that she has not taught eleventh grade in a few years, but enjoyed overcoming the learning curve associated with understanding the differences between her two classes. Taylor also notes that because she teaches the only eleventh-grade U.S. history class this year, she does not have to collaborate or coordinate with other teachers, which allows her full creative liberty in terms of creating engaging and content-packed lessons.
Taylor, a Sarasota local, initially moved to Tampa to attend the University of South Florida. She is currently in her final semester of her master’s program at USF. She has taught at numerous high schools in Florida, and seems to really be taking nicely to the Berkeley community. When asked about her initial thoughts on our school, she shared an interesting policy with me.
Taylor always gives herself three months before forming a concrete opinion. Though she did mention that so far, she is loving her transition into Berkeley, she shared with me that she never wants to speak too soon or think too soon, hence the three-month policy.
One of Taylor’s favorite aspects of being a teacher is how the job forces her to overcome not only her own challenges, but the challenges other people face as well. She tells me that teaching gives her a lot of perspective on how to deal with challenges and how to help other people deal with them.
“I think the job in itself is a character development every day for me, you know?” said Taylor.
Perspective is something that interests Taylor in multiple aspects of her life, notably in both introspection and teaching. When asked about her favorite event or theme to teach in history, Taylor told me that she loves to focus on the appreciation of differences within various ideals, as well as how “understanding different perspectives based on where people live and [their] language, essentially can change the way that people think.”
She also tells me that she believes “it is really good for students to understand that not everything is black and white.” Taylor tries to teach her students that there is never a yes or no answer in history, and encourages students to use critical thinking to identify ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ characteristics of an event or belief.
Taylor stated that if she weren’t a teacher, she would be a journalist. Although she has wanted to teach since she was young, she said that she would love to travel to different countries where events are actively taking place and just talk to people, get to know their stories. If she can’t teach history, it seems like she would instead be living the history on the front lines as a journalist.
