karen miller

‘Once You’re a Teacher, You’re a Teacher’

By Gretchen R. Crowe
HERALD Staff Writer
(From the Issue of 2/15/07)

Seventh-grade students lined up at the white board in the front of their classroom at St. Louis School in Alexandria last week to practice their cross multiplication. Karen Miller, the third period math teacher, wound her way through desks answering raised hands while her students worked, walking the thin — and often, for teachers, unattainable — line of laughing with the tweens while keeping them in order.
Then Miller called out for the attention of her class: “Let’s go over these in case you ever see one on a quiz,” she said, winking dramatically. The class laughed.
It takes a special person to teach middle-schoolers, and Miller has the magic element: an easy rapport with her students.
“I feel a connection with them,” Miller said. “Sometimes they try to act so grown up, but they still want assurance.”
Miller sees through the typical middle-schooler attitudes and appreciates her students for who they are.
“As frustrating as they can be, they’re funny and I find them easy to work with,” she said. “I get them and they get me.”
Miller has taught science, math and religion at St. Louis for seven years, the entire duration of her educational career. Her two children also attend the school: Christopher is in sixth grade and Jessica in third.
A native of West Brookfield, Mass., Miller received her undergraduate degree in zoology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1988. For the past six years, while teaching full time at the school, she has been earning a master’s degree in education from Old Dominion University. She graduated in December and showed off her cap to her classes.
Before teaching, Miller worked in a lab in Vienna. As part of her job training, she had to observe classes at the middle and high school level. That observation inspired Miller to try teaching.
“It wasn’t really the original goal, but it turned out to be the right fit,” she said.
Miller said that religion is her favorite subject to teach, because she can try “to foster the faith in a culture where it’s not promoted much,” and because of the response she gets from her students.
“The society they live in has so many challenges that are anti-religious, and the questions they come up with are very insightful and probing,” she said. “They’re astute and can see inconsistencies.”
She said her “greatest moment” as a teacher was when one of her female students told her she was considering religious life.
“She hadn’t thought that was a (vocation) she would ever want to consider,” Miller said. “If that’s the only person in my career I have touched in that way, then it’s all good.”
Daniel Baillargeon, principal, said Miller is an effective teacher because of the way she uses various teaching methods in the classroom, her organization and her relationship with the students.
“She’s very on top of the ball,” he said. “The kids respect her to a great degree.”
Miller said being an educator is something that’s in the blood.
“Once you’re a teacher, you’re a teacher,” she said. “This is the hardest job I’ve ever had. I love it.”

Gretchen R. Crowe can be reached at gcrowe@catholicherald.com.