Building Confidence and Skills: Steve Chamberlain's Journey as a Math Teacher in Williamston Schools

Today on the Hornet Hive Podcast we are continuing to introduce you to some of the amazing staff that makes our district as amazing as it is. Today we bring you Steve Chamberlain, a math teacher at Williamston High School.  

 

Transcript

Christopher Lewis:

Welcome back to the Hornet Hive. I'm your host, Doctor Christopher Lewis, one of the members of the Williamston Community School's board of education. Really excited to have you back again this week. And we're back in a brand new year and really excited to be able to introduce you to some of the amazing people that make our district strong and make our district move in the way that it does. And every week I try to share with you someone new or share with you some new things that are happening in the district. And this week, we've got another great guest with us today. Steve Chamberlain is with us and Steve's a math teacher at Williamson High School and has been there for quite a few years. And I'm really excited to be able to have him on and to have him share some of his own journey and his own story. About being a part of the Williamson Schools. Steve, thanks so much for being here today.

Steve Chamberlain:

No problem. Thanks for having me.

Christopher Lewis:

Really excited to have you here today. And I always start off these conversations with your origin story. I love being able to hear a little bit about what brought you originally to Williamston.

Steve Chamberlain:

Well, it actually is a pretty good story there. I, obviously doing interviews starting out as a pretty new teacher. I'd only done a half-year subbing job before I came to Williamston. So I was new to the interview process for the most part too, and just was taking any interview I could get at the time. And Williamson got a hold of me. I believe it was Matt Carey at the time. It was Matt Carey at the time. And he just gave me a call and said, would you like to come interview? And I said, sure. No problem. We set up a time. And since I got off the phone, I had to look up where Williamson was at. So literally went right to whatever it wasn't back in the day. I'm sure it wasn't but, you know, look at where it's at and, just had a fantastic interview. Had a chance to tour the facilities, and it was just it was fantastic at the time. It just felt like a really good fit.

Christopher Lewis:

So talk to me a little bit about that because like you said, you had never even heard of Williamston, and you've stayed in Williamston. For your career and it's have been in the district now for quite a few years. So talk to me about what has sustained you over the years in the district? What makes Williamston a great place to work?

Steve Chamberlain:

Well, it starts with the people, obviously. I mean, just from top down, I mean, just, you know, Nardo's fantastic. Superintend. Every superintendent had has been supportive, Adam is supportive, and just, you know, always involved and engaged and he allowed us to have some freedom to do some things, but also at the same time had some good leadership about some good things going on or things that they wanted to have happen as well. And right on down to teachers and principals and just everybody's been a real good fit, good, great colleagues, Whether it had changed over or not, it's always been great people to work with every single time.

Christopher Lewis:

Now I mentioned you teach math and math is not always something that every kid loves when teachers have to have a love of it as well. What made you decide you wanted to be a math teacher?

Steve Chamberlain:

It wasn't something immediate, and we had that question of the day in one of our team activities in the high school. And it wasn't the first thought. I was gonna get into probably the Spanish field at some point. Maybe even call, which I still have that that certification, but I was gonna be some translator for the UN, something like that. I hadn't really thought about education until got self my year of college and then really started to be able to help people, whether it was just friends or I actually got into the tutoring program at Eastern Michigan and the math department there. and just started to click with me that, hey. This is probably something I could be pretty good at, and here we are 23 years later.

Christopher Lewis:

I mentioned that not every kid loves math. And I know both my kids have had you for math, and they've come out of your class, always just really feeling like they understood it. in that I think you teach you speak the students language, but talk to me about how you work with kids, especially those kids that come into your class saying, I don't do math. I don't like math. You're not gonna get me to like math.

Steve Chamberlain:

One of the things I really like to do is work with students that have a hard time with math. I've done math labs in the middle school. I've done the geometry support now. This would be a 10th year doing geometry support to go along with that for students that really do have a hard time with math, and I think it just comes down to figuring out where they're at. Is it a student that lacks the skills, or is it a student that has skills? It just doesn't have the motivation so I see all kinds of students come through that maybe aren't successful for a variety of reasons. So the first part is just figuring out what kind of student they are and and then kind of addressing it from there. If it's a motivation thing, then work with them on that first, because if they're not motivated to do it, then you can teach them anything you want. It's not gonna work.

Christopher Lewis:

Now what are the things that I think is always interesting? And you kinda talked about the fact that you work with all these students and and I'm sure there's a lot of stories there that help you to be able to sustain you and to keep you motivated in the work that you do. Can you share a story with me that to you really epitomizes the experience that you've had as a teacher in Williamson?

Steve Chamberlain:

Oh, that's a good question. There are a lot of stories. every year. I always tell the kids I've seen it all, and then they show me something I haven't seen. So there's always a surprise factor with things, but I think the motivation for me is just the fact that students are so different that you may think you have them nailed down and you wanna put them in a certain box and say, okay. This is the student that they are, and then they come around and and surprise you. I can't think of any particular stories, but just that kind of general student that comes in with low to motivation or low skills my favorite thing is, unfortunately, when students come in with low skills, I mean, you feel kinda like, what am I gonna do here? But that's the greatest reward when they walk out and they've gained those skills and the confidence more than anything. And a lot of times their low confidence is what prevents them from doing well. more than anything else. And so building that motivation and confidence and then skills along the way, I think is it's the most fulfilling part of

Christopher Lewis:

Especially at the high school as kids get further on and further advanced in math, I can say as a parent that sometimes you completely forget how to do math if you're not using it on a regular basis. It's like, It's like Spanish. You talk about Spanish, but it's like that you have to stretch your brain a little bit and keep practicing and keep doing things to keep up on those skills skill basis as well. As you work with not only the kids, but also the parents, what are things that parents can do especially at the high school to support with their kids as they're learning these things that maybe they've forgotten a little bit along the way as well.

Steve Chamberlain:

There's a situation if it's just something where, you know, I can help out directly you know, parents will contact me and we could meet like we are right now and just have a quick conference about something. If it's just a quick skill they wanted to know, I could a set of resources, some videos that I've made. I mean, there's tons of videos that I have from our COVID area where I can just send them and say, hey. Watch this for a minute and see if that helps out. If it's a little bit more intensive, then I think it's more communication with me. Like, tell me what's going on with your kid. How can I help them? A lot of cases. We've got a lot but in some cases, the parents might be, hey. This is beyond where I'm at, having trouble communicating that, just having the parent talk to their to their child and say, hey. Let's set up some times to meet with him. Could be getting a tutor, could be going to homework lab, could be going to Saturday school, and there's lots of resources we have. even all the way down to maybe joining the support class. If if it gets down to where the skills are every other day or every day, they're just having so much trouble that it's not worth the communication time. It's better just to to change the schedule.

Christopher Lewis:

Well, I really appreciate you sharing that because I know that sometimes math as well as other subjects can be challenging and can be something that can stress students out and having that support for students and parents is so important to be able to help them to support their kids, but also to hopefully help their kid to advocate for themselves and to help them to be able to know what resources are available to them as well. But, Steve, I just wanna say thank you. Thank you for all of the years of service to the Williams and community schools for doing everything that you do to engage our kids and support our kids and push our kids to help them to be able to think about math in a little bit different way. And I truly wish you all the best. Yeah.

Steve Chamberlain:

Thank you very much for having me