Teacher Appreciation Week: Dr. Humston
Dr. Humston has been teaching at City High for only two years, but she’s already had a huge impact on her students–including me.
Currently, Dr. Humston teaches chemistry. Dr. Humston decided to teach later than many of her colleagues, going through undergrad and grad–and earning a PhD in research–before switching to education.
“I knew that when I was doing research, my favorite part was when students would come and join our lab and I would teach them our techniques and lab procedures,” Humston said. “That was more fun for me than the actual lab and doing the research, dissecting mice and culturing cells.”
First, she taught at the University of Iowa, as well as junior high, and then high school. As the grade level of her students changed, her goals shifted accordingly. In college, students are generally more decided on what they like, so Humston’s goals were to teach the material and help prepare her students for future jobs. Now, she emphasizes getting kids excited about science.
“When you look outside and you wonder, ‘Why is the sky blue?’ and why is this and why is that, there’s an answer. You can find out answers by just asking questions,” Humston said. “My goals became to get kids asking questions and thinking and wondering.”
However, she doesn’t apply these principles in her work–she also uses them at home. While raising her kids, she encourages them to use a more scientific way of thinking.
“I just love the kinds of questions [my kids] ask. I don’t always tell them the answer,” Humston said. “We just talk about it and let them think and figure it out together.”
As well as getting her students involved in science, Dr. Humston values getting to know students’ own unique passions. While hearing about some of Dr. Humston’s teaching stories, I was very moved by how highly she thought of making a positive difference in people’s lives.
“I’ve been able to form lasting and strong relationships with student who make me proud of their achievements,” Humston said. “It’s not just about what I can do, it’s about what I’ve seen [my students] do.”
Dr. Humston looks towards the future with a similar mentality. She wants to keep teaching so she can continue to watch her students succeed.
“My hope is that over the next 20 years while I’m teaching, I can have more stories,” Humston said. “Watching kids achieve what they want to achieve could be something I’m really proud of.”
Though Dr. Humston wants her students to learn from her, she also wants to learn from her students. She keeps an open mind and tries new things. She loves to read, exercise, and someday she wants to try skydiving. All of these things are what make Dr. Humston a great teacher. With her willingness to learn and experience, she recognizes that teaching isn’t necessarily about her. She realizes that students lives are complicated. Every kid has a lot going on in and out of school.
“I might come in with a super great idea or plan, and it could go way wrong,” Humston said. “But, I have to find a way to make students understand and want to be in my class.”
Even with a few mishaps, Dr. Humston’s classroom is always interesting and engaging. Her passion for science, learning, and thinking shines in every aspect of her life.
Teacher Appreciation Week: Thos Trefz
Squirrels? No, butterflies. Certainly a river or waterfall. There was probably a songbird and descriptions of dewy morning grass included as well, but they’ve escaped my memory along with the rest of it. Whatever the details of this excessively elaborate poem were, I will never remember them because it was recited to me during the last lap of an exhausting threshold workout by a full-lunged, relaxed Thos Trefz, running beside me and the Distance Crew like it was nothing.
Along with teaching us how to train to threshold-poem levels of aerobic ability, how to push ourselves beyond what we perceive as our “limit”, and the importance of resting and “adapting”, Thos has taught us how to find clear mental spaces in times of stress (i.e. 400m into a race that is not going as planned), how to always do the little things with absolute precision, and how to detect sarcasm when both the words being said and the tone being used would lead one to assume complete seriousness.
We have also been taught from those “teachable moments” that typically end with a sassy remark. In the cross country season of 2015, when varsity was just going on a run instead of racing in Sterling, IL, some boys from another school started calling after the girls, asking them their PRs in a cat-calling manner. The girls didn’t say anything because Thos told them to not respond, but he then turned around at the last moment and came back with, “What’s YOUR PR, big boy?!” Although I wasn’t on the team at the time, it’s one of Amelia Morrow’s favorite stories, so I have heard it more than enough to know that this experience taught all of them how to respond to cat-calling: by simply turning it on its head and to send the cat-callers away with confusion, and your group away with a story to tell.
We’ve learned numerous things just by being expected to do the basic functions of being an athlete and falling short, too. I have learned the hard way that outdoor stairs in the winter are not to be trusted and it’s better to play it safe when considering a concussion. Some people who will remain anonymous learned that snowballs are best kept on the ground, far away from impulsive teens’ hands. During these sometimes excruciating processes of learning, Thos always remains calm, doesn’t dwell on the fact that it happened, and just points us in the direction of how we can move forward and avoid these mistakes in the future.
The current track season for our Distance Crew has not gone exactly as we expected with ⅔ of us going in and out of the cross training room, but Thos has made it clear that he’s not disappointed in us. He just wants us to be the best people as well as athletes we can be at any given time. Starting off most practices with an inspirational quote from a strong, powerful woman and themed days like Teammate Tuesday and Thankful Thursday keep us growing as people and remind us to never get too wrapped up in our own times and problems, and that making the team and community better is what really matters.