New Faces: Meet the new school staff

A new school year is on the horizon and among the hustle and bustle of getting classrooms ready and establishing lesson plans are 12 new teachers. Two of those new teachers are Chelsie Autrey and Jamie Murdoch.

Both Autrey and Murdoch will be teaching at Mary Lynch the start of the new school year. Autrey will be teaching fourth grade and Murdoch will be teaching sixth grade.

Autrey grew up in Pine Bluffs, Wyoming, and she is not the only teacher in her family. She said that she decided she wanted to be a teacher sometime in junior high. Autrey, 24, is now out of college and has subbed for two years for grades k-12 in Laramie County in Wyoming.

"My dad is a teacher and my grandpa was a teacher, so it's in my blood. But one day I was watching a documentary about teaching and one of the teachers on there said something about how when you're a teacher it's something inside of you that makes you a teacher, and that was my 'aha' moment," Autry said. "I've taught Kindergarten at Banner County school for two years. I recently got married and we live in Kimball, so I really wanted to start teaching in the community that I live, so I can be a part of the community."

Despite having been a Kindergarten teacher for the last two years, Autrey looks forward to being able to pick up the pace with fourth graders.

"It's going to be quite different just based on the age alone, but what I'm really excited for is being able to focus a lot more on reading and writing," Autrey said.

Kindergarteners are just learning about words and sentence structure, however, with fourth graders a lot more can be accomplished. Autrey is excited to be able to go more in depth concerning the reading and writing aspect of things. She wants to present a positive challenge for her students and encourage them to learn.

"I think that teaching is a very important profession, because it is our job to shape the minds of our youth and we are preparing the younger generations for the future ahead of us. We do this by example through what we do every day and by what we teach them in the classroom," Autrey said.

Autrey has a strong interest in teaching the children through discovery learning. Discovery learning is a teaching technique where the teacher encourages the students to seek out answers and come to the right answer through their own discovery. This can be done through a guided activity where the children must find the answer to a question by participating in the activity.

"I like the discovery learning because it isn't just kids sitting at their desks listening to a lecture. They are able to be involved and I like to help them learn through different activities, also when they do figure something out on their own, it's more likely to stick," Autrey said.

Autrey explained that by using the discovery learning technique she learns what the children really need to learn. Generally what the children can't figure out on their own are the areas and the topics that the teacher needs to address and explain better.

Autrey is looking forward to being a part of the community through her teaching and is very excited for the new school year.

Jamie Murdoch grew up and graduated in Kimball. She worked at the sheriff's office as a dispatcher for several years and then stayed home when her children were little. When her children got a little older, she went back to school and got her teaching degree. She graduated in May of 2013. She lives in Kimball and is married to Dwain Murdoch of the sheriff's department. They have three daughters, ages ten, eight, and seven.

Murdoch will be a sixth grade teacher at Mary Lynch, and this will be her first year teaching. Murdoch said that, due to her student teaching experience in Pine Bluffs, she is very excited for the sixth grade.

"I volunteered a lot up at the school, and I have found that I love all the grades. I would have been content teaching any of those, but I am really excited about sixth grade. I've found that there are a lot more in depth teaching and activities you can do with them because of their maturity level that you wouldn't be able to do with, say a six-year-old," Murdoch said.

Murdoch wants to incorporate a lot in her classroom that has to do with the multiple learning theory. This theory suggests that kids all learn best in different ways, some through art, some through music, and several other ways.

"I want to try to help the kids discover how they learn best and then incorporate the seven different types of learning into as many of my lessons as possible so that it will be fun and engaging along with reaching different kids in their learning styles," Murdoch said.

Murdoch said that she has always wanted to be a teacher, and, in fact, comes from a long line of teachers. However, life led her down different paths. What started up her renewed zeal for teaching was her eight-year-old daughter.

"Our middle daughter, she has cerebral palsy and she kind of inspired me to fulfill dreams. I can't tell her that she can do anything if I don't make an effort to do that myself, so that prompted me to get back to college and work toward where I wanted to be," Murdoch said.

Murdoch's goals for her teaching involve teaching kids to be productive members of society in all ways possible, intellectually as well as emotionally. She hopes to teach responsibility.

"I especially want to do this because I think sixth grade might be the start of where kids stop really loving the fact that they have to go to school. So if I can at least show them that they can enjoy learning and hopefully encourage them to be lifelong learners I think they might be able to see how learning will affect them for the rest of their lives," Murdoch said.

Autrey and Murdoch will start teaching this year at Mary Lynch Elementary school. They will be among several other new teachers this year who will also be featured in future issues.