Krysta McGuire is working on a cookbook with her fourth grade students and hopes it will be published by the end of the school year. It's a writing exercise she's using to teach her students how to write down and follow instructions. Governor Michael Easley, Lt. Governor Beverly Perdue, State Representative Melanie Goodwin, State Senator Jerry Tillman and Richard Shaw, principal of Mt. Gilead Elementary school, have all contributed recipes to be included in the book, which McGuire hopes to sell to raise money for the fourth grade trip to Mt. Mitchell. McGuire remembered one recipe from a student for baked chicken. “First you get the chicken, then you clean it, cut it up and cook it. That's how you get cooked chicken.”
McGuire has her own recipe for success in the classroom. “You're only as good as the people around you,” McGuire said of being named teacher of the year for Mt. Gilead elementary school for the 2004-2005 school year. She credits the faculty and staff with her success in the classroom. “They'll listen to your outlandish ideas and make them possible.”
McGuire originally worked in retail but hated the hours. Her parents lived in Woodrun where she met her husband, Todd, at the pool. He was a teacher and her mother was a secretary at a kindergarten through eighth grade school. Both encouraged her to go into the field of education because of the good hours and benefits.
McGuire married in 1994. Her parent's house was heated with a wood stove so she chopped wood often. She joked about marrying her husband because he had central heat and air. They have one child, Grace, who is 2 years old.
McGuire received her education from Gardner Webb and transferred to Pfeiffer University where she earned her bachelor's degree in elementary education. While she was working on her degree, Shaw, then principal of Star Biscoe elementary school, offered her a job teaching art when she graduated. McGuire took the job in 1995 and began her career in the county schools with a program called art on a cart. She went into classrooms with her cart of goodies to get the creative juices flowing. The next year McGuire took on a fourth grade classroom.
Her classes were certainly not boring. “My first year of teaching fourth grade, I tried an experiment with kids in the trailer. I used paper bags to show how heat rises and caught the bag on fire!” McGuire said. She laughed as she recounted how a student threw a glass of water on the bag and put out the fire.
McGuire brings a different sort of fire to her classroom these days. “Whatever I do, I need to do it with enthusiasm and a zest for life,” she said. Her inspiration for this attitude is an older cousin who contracted leukemia when she was 15. “She had an enthusiasm for life I thought was amazing. She made everything fun and grew up to be a teacher,” McGuire recalled. Growing up, McGuire would rather have been anywhere than in the classroom. Now she wants her students to know that school is fun and learning is a lifelong experience.
McGuire says a character pledge every day with her students. “I am a student of good character,” the students say. Most teacher's pledge, “I'm a teacher of good character.” “I say the pledge as if I'm a student,” McGuire said. “Because I'm learning right along with them.”
After four years in a fourth grade classroom, McGuire took the position of AIG curriculum facilitator at Star Biscoe for the math program. After a year there, she accepted the position of fourth grade teacher at Mt. Gilead. She was glad to be back in the classroom. “I like the interaction with the kids. I like to see how they view things,” McGuire said.
“Fourth grade is a difficult year. The state requires the students to be independent thinkers and realize they are part of an interdependent society,” McGuire said. State scores generally go down in fourth grade. McGuire attributes this factor to several things. Up until fourth grade, there are two people in the classroom to assist in learning. In fourth grade there is only one. The writing test is another important measure of scholastic learning that is implemented in the fourth grade and those students have that test and the EOG to contend with. “But scores don't tell the whole story,” McGuire said. She believes students should be judged on a variety of levels.
McGuire likes to keep her students actively involved in the learning process. “They need to know learning is fun, and can retain the information so much better if they know why it's important.” She also has a soft spot for the children in her classroom. “I find myself being way too easy on them sometimes,” she said. McGuire finds herself wondering why they didn't do their homework. “Did they have to take care of their younger siblings?” she asked. “Did they have to fix their own dinner?”
It's that caring and concern that gives her a vision for the future of education in the county. “We've got to help new mothers understand the importance of developing literacy skills with their children,” McGuire stressed. “We don't need to be talking at them, we need to talk to them.” She said parents need to be encouraged to expose their children to books, music and writing and not just sit them in front of the television.
McGuire also wants to see the country move to national assessments with national standards. “It doesn't have to be a competition. If one school does something well, we should learn how to use their techniques in our classrooms,” she said.
