By Loren Mattern
This year, Plymouth High School welcomes seven new teachers. Some of them, such as Mr. Carl Davis, have taught before though. He “needed something new,” and PHS was it.
Mr. Davis has experience in teaching geography and history of the world at both junior high and high school. For the past four years, Mr. Davis has taught at Caston school corporation. He now teaches World History for WSOI.
Ever since he can remember, Mr. Davis has always wanted to teach. “I’ve always loved learning,” Mr. Davis said. He has a “passion for teaching others.” It is something he was “drawn to.” His education classes in college prepared him for the actual teaching experience; Mr. Davis said that nothing “completely prepares you for the actual experience.” He is thankful for the mentoring his professors gave him along the way and how they helped him get to where he is now.
This will be Mr. Davis’ fifth year in the education field, and his first year at PHS. He truly enjoyed his four years in the Caston School Corporation, but says there were four different aspects that made him consider moving to the Plymouth Community School Corporation. First, Mr. Davis needed something new; he spent the last four years in the same place and did not want something he is so passionate about becoming boring to him. Another thought that came to mind was that he had always heard good words about PHS. The Weidner School of Inquiry also drew him in with its different style of teaching. Mr. Davis was intrigued with the thought of trying something so auspicious for his teaching career. Then, there was also getting to have more time with his wife since their jobs are now closer.
Mr. Davis is seen tending to his students’ question on the Do Now. He had formerly been walking around, reminding students to get on task. Photo by: Loren Mattern
Formerly, Mr. Davis taught using iPads. In Plymouth, students from second grade to twelfth grade are supplied with laptops. He said that MacBooks “are more suitable for the classroom.”
” iPads were easier to carry around for students, but I felt they were limited in a lot of ways,” Mr. Davis replied. Some reasoning supporting laptops; they are easier to type with, can print off their projects, and with laptops students can save their work on a flash drive.
Mr. Davis describes himself in three adjectives; he decided on “enthusiastic, passionate, and caring.” He says that his past colleagues and pupils would most likely label him as “enthusiastic and passionate about what he does.”
Mr. Davis wanted to be a history teacher. He wanted to teach in the WSOI because of “the culture of collaboration and grit ” that he wanted to create in the classroom. Mr. Davis replied with, “I really enjoyed looking at cause and effect.” Considering that “who we are today has a lot to do with our history,” Mr. Davis would like to, hopefully, help students make connections with the past that they can relate to.
Mr. Davis went to a high school with fifty-two peers in his graduating class. He was the salutatorian at Chalmer, Indiana’s Frontier High School. Then, he proceeded to gain higher expectations by graduating at Purdue with a 4.0 GPA. Mr. Davis’ “experience at Purdue was great.” He developed both professional and personal relationships with his peers. Mr. Davis worries that he had possibly been too wrapped up in his academic goals rather than enjoying his time at Purdue. He focused “more on the processes of getting an A, rather than obtaining a deeper understanding.”
While at Frontier, Mr. Davis participated in cross country for a season but was on the basketball team all four years. He had always loved basketball growing up. While in high school, Mr. Davis started coaching. When he went on to Purdue, he decided not to play basketball, all his focus went towards academics. Although he did not play throughout college, he still proceeded to coach three of the four years he spent at Purdue.
C.S. Lewis once talked of how, “When we put first things first, second things are not suppressed, rather they increase.” This is Mr. Davis’ favorite quote and he tries to apply this everyday. He said, “We get caught up in results far too often and lose perspective.” He wants to be intentional about focusing on the process instead of results. “The ironic thing about doing that is the results tend to take care of themselves when we put first things first.” continued Mr. Davis.
When Mr. Davis compares his small-town school of Frontier with fifty-two students in his graduating class, to PHS which averages three hundred students per class, there is a difference. PHS has a smaller class average than Caston, which averages thirty or more students per classroom. Mr. Davis explains, “I think bigger class sizes makes it a little more difficult to get to know your students, but I don’t think it’s an excuse not to get to know them. It takes a little more time, but I felt like I knew and connected with them individually during the year.” He liked his high school, where you could get to know peers a lot quicker.Since his first year of teaching, Mr. Davis has changed. He said, “I feel like I’ve grown a lot as an educator since my first year of teaching.” He continues, “In my opinion, experience is always a positive as long as you still have an enthusiasm for improving yourself as a teacher.”