By: Dan Hoang
Amy Rill is a German teacher that teaches at Howard High School and has taught at Howard for four years. “I grew up in Pennsylvania where German was a common language and I was taught German by my father. My ancestor can be traced back all the way into the 1700 where my ancestor immigrated to America. My family even have this book where we keep record of who is in our family and you can see like my name on here and my family generation to generation.” Mrs. Rill (Frau Rill) has told many aspects of her life as a teacher to her students and a friend to her neighboring teacher. “I try to have a class where everyone can enjoy and have fun while still learn about German. I have these connections with my students who are in my beginning classes and in my advance classes where I can see them progress into the language.” When asked about her students, she had commented on one of her class that she finds very interesting. “This one class in one of my fourth period classes, we have so much connections with each other and have wonderful students who love to learn and to interact with. This makes me feel very good about how my students have something out of this class and enjoy this friendship since they have all something in common, having German as their third or fourth language. It really is fascinating how my students are connecting in German class through their knowledge of different languages and I think that’s what makes my class very fun.” As being a teacher at Howard High School, there will always be connections with neighboring classes. As for Frau Rill, her neighbor, Mrs. Ghezzi, has been with her since she came to Howard. “Mrs. Ghezzi has always been my neighbor and at first I did talk to her to help me start with class because I before for my first two years of teaching, I taught at Howard and at a different middle school. It didn’t let me have those connections with the students at either schools, but Mrs. Ghezzi has helped with the adjustment and after staying at Howard, I have someone who I can talk to.” As the only German teacher at Howard, Frau Rill had made a connection with Mrs. Ghezzi. “We do have moments where will would come talk to each other during others classes to lighten the mood up and have fun and have these connections. Sometimes we would not talk to each other for days because we are busy with planning and getting class prepared, but we would talk to each other and have discussions about our classes like what we have done today that worked really well with students or what one of our students has made, and even projects that we assigned to our students because we are amazed how our students are taking this project and turning it into something that everyone can enjoy. We also bond over how much stress teachers have. We know that student stress over the exams and what to study for, but we also stress over to if everyone in class has the content they need to study and making the exams for the students and grading them. Even proctoring can be stressful as students stress about it. It’s one of the discussions I have with Mrs. Ghezzi that we talk about and relate to. And sometimes we share ideas of what we do with our classes to see if students can work with materials and learn about the language, German, French, or Spanish.” Working with students and teachers, Frau Rill has shown that she will always try to share her interests through activities and conversations. “ I love cooking sewing, making crafts, and I try to show these to my students through lessons in class but not like forcing them into it, but they do always end up liking it and it just makes me happy how I have a stronger connection with my students.”
Dan's Connection
I have heard of Frau Rill when my friend told me about her and how her personality was really nice. This prompted me to ask her about herself and her connection with Howard. I wasn’t surprised that we have connected by me being a world language student and her being a German teacher, but what did surprise me was how we have connected on interest we have like cooking and making crafts and trying to have others join. I have also relate to Frau Rill how I have with my other teachers and how we have a connection with them and learn from them about life.
