What were you doing in 1978?  Half of EduSanity was only 3 years old and the other half had just been born.  We hadn’t made much of a contribution to society yet.  However, while we were busy flushing Snoopy wind-up toys down the toilet (Jason) and learning how to sit upright by ourselves (Chris), a teacher by the name of Melody Foltz was beginning her career as a math teacher at New Mark Junior High School in North Kansas City, Missouri.

Today, Melody (now) Shoger is putting the final touches on her 35th year of teaching, an accomplishment that absolutely must be put into context.

Melody Shoger – Math Teacher Extraordinaire

Mrs. Shoger has taught at the same school for 35 years.  In that time she has educated over 3600 students.  That’s a decent sized Missouri town.  She has taught under 6 principals and survived the education policies of 6 Presidents.  Even the name of the school has changed; becoming New Mark Middle School in 1980.  She has worked with hundreds of teachers (myself included) and is quite literally an anchor of stability in the lives of thousands of people who have passed through her classroom door.

But Mrs. Shoger is more than just an educator who has weathered the ups and downs of a teacher’s existence.  She is a first-rate math teacher who has provided her students with a world-class education for over three decades.  If you ask Melody about her secret to success, she will brush off the question as though she doesn’t have one, but it doesn’t take long to figure it out if you listen to what she has to say.

Melody’s favorite aspect of teaching is “seeing that bulb light up” in a student’s eyes when they make a connection and get excited about something they have learned.  Many teachers can relate to this, and it serves as a reminder that the best aspects of teaching and learning often happen in the moment and can never be recorded as a test score or grade.  Most people in this world don’t ever get to experience that moment, which makes it a child’s unique gift to their teacher, and Melody thrives on it.  In fact, she actively seeks it.  She regularly spends 10 hours per day at school in addition to the 10 hours per week she spends at home grading papers and searching for new ideas.  For those of you who weren’t one of Melody’s math students, that’s approximately 60 hours per week spent teaching, researching, planning and grading.  She harnesses the power of social networks including Facebook and Pinterest to plunder the ideas of others in order to vary her strategies for teaching.  Walking into her classroom is like stepping into the aftermath of a “math idea tornado”.  Melody has more ideas than she has time for, yet is never satisfied with the ideas she has.  If you want to know how one continually improves even after 35 years of experience, that would be a good place to start.

          The Aftermath of the Math Idea Tornado

Mrs. Shoger’s greatest challenge is keeping the students engaged, a task that has grown continually more difficult over the years as student apathy has been perpetuated by a system that undercuts motivation with “no fail” policies of social promotion and an emphasis on test scores that privileges the importance of “standardized testing week” over every other school day.   Mrs. Shoger is not allowed to hold her students accountable, yet is held accountable herself when these same students fail to perform well on standardized exams.

Many of us would recognize the hypocrisy in that situation and let it ruin our outlooks, but not Mrs. Shoger.  Her response is simply, “Kids are kids”.  And with those words, you catch another glimpse into the secret she claims not to have.   The more you listen to Melody the more you realize that her secret to 35 years of excellent teaching is simple: kids.  For her, everything is about the kids.  Still, many a teacher has strode bravely into the educational breach with an idealist vision of saving the world one student at a time, so what makes Melody Shoger different?

Quite simply, Mrs. Shoger has approached the teaching of math with the exact same philosophy that seems to be all the rage lately.  She prepares students to use math in the “real world” and helps her students make connections between math and their futures on a daily basis.  Some people would like you to believe that “college and career readiness” is the flavor of the month.  For teachers like Melody Shoger, it’s been on the menu since Jimmy Carter created the Department of Education and started this whole mess.

                 Mrs. Shoger with her Husband Neal

Mrs. Shoger can point to 3600+ students who have been pushed to understand math as a part of their lives, which she often gets to witness first hand.  Many of her former students have children of their own, which means that many families have two generations of Shoger graduates.  She is invited to weddings and has friend requests on Facebook from former students all over the world.  Many of her former students have become teachers themselves, and Mrs. Shoger has inspired more than one career in education.  Her own daughter is going into math education, a choice that Melody wholeheartedly supports despite the fact that many people suggest she should find another career.  Mrs. Shoger knows that we could use another generation of patience, perseverance, love for math, and desire to serve others.

Hopefully, the students of New Mark Middle School will be able to benefit from Mrs. Shoger’s efforts for many years to come.  35 years is a long time, but the energy and effort she puts into her teaching would put many newly minted teachers to shame.  When asked how long she sees herself teaching, Melody’s response is unsurprisingly pragmatic.

As long as I still love what I am doing.  I work with great people. I enjoy the kids–even the stinkers. I have a passion for math and for learning.  I know there is a downside (paper work, testing, changes in curriculum, attitude… etc.), but there is to almost every career.  I can deal with those.  Until the downside surpasses the positives, I will still wake up each day and trek to New Mark.

Mrs. Shoger is not alone.  Despite what many would have you believe, the vast majority of teachers work tirelessly for your children.  Today may be Teacher Appreciation Day, but any day would be a good day to thank one of them.