Congratulations to Ms. Sharon Dublin, an eighth-grade teacher at Challenger Middle School, who has been selected as an HCS Changemaker!
Ms. Dublin has always had a great love for math, which led to her majoring in the subject as she began college. After an assignment which involved writing a paper about math scores across the country, she realized that she wanted to do something to help. That very semester she made the decision to go into education and focused her sights at the elementary level, knowing she could help students build a solid foundation. Not long after she began, however, she felt pulled to the secondary level and quickly went back to school to get certified for those grades. She says she absolutely loves teaching 8th grade, noting that it’s a very important period in preparing students for the responsibilities of high school.
“She has done an outstanding job this year with our eighth-grade math,” says Challenger Middle Principal Bo Coln, adding that he and other administrators love seeing how Ms. Dublin is engaging her students in a way that will not only increase mastery but also encourage a love for the subject itself.
Her bright and colorful classroom is a warm and inviting atmosphere for students, which can most-often be found working collaboratively in groups, recording things in their interactive notebooks, or walking around the room to complete broader assignments via stations. She says she likes to have the students collaborating with one another because as an adult it will be important for them to be able to work as part of a team. “Very few jobs can be done completely by yourself,” she says.
When she isn’t teaching, Ms. Dublin loves to paint abstracts, read fantasy and science-fiction stories, and hang out with her two cats which she affectionately named Mode and Pi. She also loves to write spoken-word poetry, has hosted poetry clubs for students in the past, and was even the president of her poetry club in college.
Ms. Dublin says that she hopes her students with learn a little bit of math and responsibility in her classroom. When they look back on their time with her, though, she says that isn’t the biggest focus. “Mostly,” she says, “I want them to know that I genuinely cared about them and did everything I could to help them.” She is there for her students both inside and outside of the classroom, treats them with respect, and lets them know they are loved on a daily basis. It takes a true agent of change to ensure students feel cared for while also seeing that they learn what they need to prepare for high school.
Ms. Dublin accomplishes both, and so it is most appropriate that she be named an HCS Changemaker.