By Henriikka Niemi
Staff Writer
Coppell High School English teacher Samantha Neal graduated from the University of North Texas with a Bachelor of Arts in English and Secondary Education and is currently in her second year at Coppell. Neal has teaching experience in English, P.E. and dance, having obtained teaching certificates in the last two. For March, Neal was recognized as the CHS Teacher of the Month.
Q: Why did you get into teaching?
A: I started teaching for the same reason that a lot of others do, because we either had a really awesome teacher in the past who inspired us or had some really uninspiring teachers. One of my teachers actually didn’t know my name until May, and she called my mom to fuss about me but it wasn’t until halfway through the conversation that she realized she was calling the wrong parent. I’ll never forget her name, which is an awesome irony. She knew so little about her students, and because that hurt me so much, I wanted to not be that teacher.
Q: What is your favorite subject to teach?
A: My favorite thing to teach would be English because that’s the one I keep choosing to stick with. I do miss teaching dance, I started dancing when I was two and I was on the high school drill team and danced in college. I left when I got pregnant and realized that I would need to be at home a lot more.
Q: How would you describe your teaching style and personality?
A: I try to engage the kids in the things that they like in order to leverage school, which they don’t always enjoy. I try to make them interested in literature that may seem very inaccessible to them because it was written so long ago or about things that they didn’t experience. I help them understand that there’s still value in this literature, and we can access it even though it is so different from our world here in Coppell. I also try to develop relationships with them so that they have a reason to come to my class. I don’t want to repeat that moment I had with my teacher, I want them all to understand that they have value in this school, in my classroom and with each other.
Q: What has been your most memorable moment as a teacher so far?
When I see a student who hates to read, write or doesn’t want to come to school and they say they enjoy my class and look forward to English, or they actually liked a book and even finished a book we read, that’s always really powerful to me. Also, one year when I was in Frisco my drill team girls danced in the Super Bowl, and it was really amazing to actually give them an audience because a lot of times people don’t see dance that way. Then this past Monday, one of my students brought me an apple for Teacher Appreciation week and it was the first time I’ve received an apple as a teacher. That’s a really iconic moment, and it was really sweet that he remembered because we had just joked about it two weeks previously. There have been a lot of sad moments too, and I hate that those jump out at me, but there are many more happy ones.
Q: What does Teacher of the Month mean to you?
A: It’s really powerful because we are nominated by other teachers, so I really feel like I’ve had an impact on someone or maybe more than one person who felt impacted enough to ‘hey, she’s doing something really cool and she should be recognized for it.’ I happen to know the person who nominated me, Mrs. Irons. I’m her mentor this year so it’s affirmation that I’ve done something good with her. She’s an amazing teacher and she’s going to keep growing.
Q: What’s one interesting fact about you?
I have a great great great grandmother who was in the circus and she was really famous for having four legs.
