Getting to the Core at Hermosa Valley

Editor’s Note: Hermosa Valley School’s sixth grade journalism class is using the Patch blog to post some of their work under the guidance of teacher Christine Duclos.

By Delilah Gunn and Annika Hanson

We interviewed the sixth-grade "core" teachers in December to find out more about their personal lives and to figure out what "core" really means to them.

Ms. Infusino is one of the sixth-grade core* teachers that we interviewed. This is her tenth year of teaching students and she said, "I would definitely recommend this job to other people because I love the students’ energy, it's very rewarding, and it allows me to be creative."

Some skills required are being organized and understanding new technology. One thing she doesn't like is that she feels she doesn't have or give the students enough time to do everything they need to do during school.

Ms. Infusino went to North Central College and North Illinois University to become a teacher and currently has a two-year-old son named Christopher. She enjoys running, cooking, raising Christopher, and tasting new foods.

The other Core teacher we interviewed was Mrs. Taylor, who went to Purdue University for undergraduate and Pepperdine University for graduate school. She loves teaching students; both sixth-grade core and seventh-grade language arts.

She mentioned that some of the skills you need to possess as a teacher are creativity, big picture planning, and of course, understanding of students and new technology. For her, everyday is full of learning and interesting ideas.

"Everyday is different with these kids," said Mrs. Taylor.

She tries not to be boring, or too exciting, and has many papers to grade and little time to do so; although, she’s a scantron machine when it comes to scanning tests; a whole classes’ in four minutes!

"The impact of the students is so great and spectacular," she said.

These two teachers really help every student have good character and learn more each day.

*Core is language arts and social studies back-to-back and with the same students for both subjects.