Unconventional Teaching Methods Inspire Mahwah Students

Each week Patch sits down with individuals who contribute to the high standards of education in Mahwah, and asks them a few questions to get to know them better.

Yvonne Beatrice is one of those individuals. Named Teacher of the Year in 2010, she continues to implement unconventional ways of teaching Honors history and political science to inspire her students. 

How do you assess a student and determine whether that student is shy or just disinterested in class?

YB: “I get very personal with my kids. I track them down in the hallway. I’ll track them down in the cafeteria. I’ll stop at their table in the library and that becomes my personal goal because that was me and nobody gave me that personal attention until I got to college. That's where I got the confidence and realized I have something of value to give. I don’t want kids to wait that long. Once I develop a relationship with them and they know I’m not trying to pick on them or push them, then I encourage them to do things. I’ll make them stand and defend a position in class and they are intimidated but they know I’m calling on them to help them. When they see the other children react to them, it gets easier for them the next time. It’s a slow process and it usually takes from September to June but by June I think I’ve got everybody.”

Tell me about your unconventional method for teaching students.

YB: “I have a very active philosophy. I want the kids doing as much as they can, not within these walls.  I do all different projects that get them outside. If it’s a Presidential election year, they have to go work for a campaign of their choice. They have to see what the process is and I supplement with readings, but they have to go out and do actual field work.”  

Describe a project they’ve done in the past.

YB: “They’ve done an oral history when Mahwah High School was campus style. When Mahwah High School first started in 1959 until 1985, it was campus style. There are some remnants of buildings that were used for campus buildings. It was based on a California school but then they realized we don’t have California weather. In 1985, they made it the one building that it is now. The kids interviewed students who went to school during that time period.”

What’s the new project your students are working on?

YB: “Three years ago I started the Mahwah Project. The students have to do traditional research on Mahwah. They have to go out and investigate landmarks, old homes, catch a few oral histories of people who lived here for a certain amount of years. They have to visit cemeteries, the Mahwah Museum, find the slave plots in Mahwah, visit parks, and sit in on township meetings. The kids are required to do some of these things and can choose others.”

Why did you start Mock Trial?

YB: “When I first started teaching here in 1999, my son was as senior and my daughter was a freshman. The story goes we started high school together, but she got to graduate and I’m still here. I started mock trial for her, because I thought she would be interested in it. My husband, Michael, is a trial lawyer. You have to have a teacher and a lawyer coach for Mock Trial. She always spoke well and was semi interested in legal matters.  I started it and said get your friends together and we’ll get this rolling. We only had the minimum number you could have and we went to the semi finals. It was so stressful for everyone that at the end of the year my daughter said she never wanted to do that again. The next year I had the rest of her friends, but not my own daughter. It grew since then and bottom line is, she is in her third year of law school right now. So I didn’t mention it for the period she told me and she went back to it herself.”

Tell me about your upcoming Mock Trial Competition.

YB: “We went to the Bar Foundation Law Center in New Brunswick on February 9^th and we won the second round of competition there, so we qualify for the regional final on March 15^th. We will go against whoever is the other regional competitor for North Jersey representation.  Right now we are one of six schools left in the whole competition, out of approximately 30.  If we win, there’s another series of two more competitions to win the state. Whoever wins the state goes to National.”

What do you do on your off time?

YB: “I have no off time. Mock Trial is so time intensive. That’s the only downside. You need to devote so much time to it. Sometimes I’m dead tired. I know they’re dead tired. We work weekends. I go home, do paperwork, clean the house, go to the store, go to Mock Trial, go to bed. Then my husband is the lawyer, so then we talk about it at home.  He loves working with the kids. I have kids who come back after graduating from college who still quote him.”

What do you want to do when you aren’t teaching anymore?

YB: “My family is Italian. My heritage is Sicilian and Northern Italy. I would love to spend a couple months just getting to know the region of Tuscany. I want to go on a bakery tour. My father was a baker therefore I don’t bake. My father ran a bakery in Fairlawn for a long time. His joke was that he turned gray early, as I did, and he would tell me he had flour in his hair. I remember thinking, when is he going to wash that out. I would love to travel and spend long periods of time in each place. That would be my dream.”

How did you decide to become a teacher?

YB: “I was a history major and it came from taking a look at the Want Ads the first semester of my senior year in college. There was nothing I could do with this except got for a Doctorate. Since I paid my way through school, I could not afford to go on. I took all the education courses I could, and did student teaching and I figured, I enjoy kids and I enjoy history, so why not put the two together. When I got out of college in the mid 70’s, it was a rough time. Schools were actually closing because the population had gone down so drastically. It was out of need.”

Looking back, are you happy with your career choice?

YB: “I come in this room and I love every minute that I’m with the kids. The down side of the job is all the paperwork. I do make the kids write a lot. It’s a lot of grading and my family is sick of it at times. I’ll go in the car and grade. Even if you can do just one, it’s a help. When you have 90 research papers to grade at the same time and it’s constant, it’s time consuming.”