The Learning Curve
Alumna and award-winning teacher Jennifer Mitchell helped turn around a struggling school
Alumna Jennifer Mitchell’s path to winning a prestigious Milken Educator Award wasn’t an easy one. She says she struggled when she first arrived in 2005 to teach third grade at Sojourner Truth Academy from teaching in her hometown of Beloit, Wisconsin.
“There were days when I went home crying,” she says. “You see that with teachers fresh out of school coming to our school; they’re not sure how to handle the behaviors.”
Today, Mitchell (B.S. ’00, M.Ed. ’03) is a director of curriculum and instruction at Sojourner, a North Minneapolis charter school where 98 percent of students receive free or reduced-price lunch. “I’m talking to seventh graders now, and I say, ‘Do you remember the pain that you caused me?’,” she says, laughing. “Building relationships is the key thing. You’ve got to find those things that the kids really do hold important and talk to them about them.”
Mitchell found herself tearing up once again in November, when she was surprised with the $25,000 Milken award at a school assembly. The honor follows years of progress at the school. As a master-teacher in the Teacher Advancement Program, Mitchell helped move Sojourner off the “watch list” for adequate yearly progress under No Child Left Behind. “We went from 19 to 52 percent proficient in the area of math,” she says. “Good things are happening at our school. I feel blessed that I was recognized, but it could have been anybody.”
Mitchell speaks of her CEHD experience with appreciation and is considering a return for her principal’s license. But her most formative lesson in teaching may have come from Mrs. Dutter, her first-grade teacher back home in Beloit.
“She just made learning fun for me,” says Mitchell. “At St. Patrick’s Day, we’d go outside for recess, and we could come back and our chairs would be flipped over, and there would be green glitter around the classroom. ‘Oh, the leprechauns have been here!’ I’ve done some of those things in the classroom, just keeping learning exciting.”
At Sojourner Truth, Mitchell brought fun along with an element she’d learned to be crucial: hands-on learning. As a curriculum supervisor, she’s had the opportunity to absorb other good ideas around her.
“I’ve become a better teacher from watching other teachers,” she says. “Every teacher has something they’re very strong at, and they bring something new to their classroom every day. What we’re trying to do at Sojourner is get teachers in other classrooms, to share these things at meetings. And other teachers are like, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’"
Mitchell was on a maternity leave for the birth of her first child Jayda this fall.
Story by Peter S. Scholtes | February 2011
