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04/26/2017 08:30 AMPatricia Scalesse always thought she would be a teacher, and she has always enjoyed teaching students at the middle school level.
“I like the fact that you can have conversation and talk about things intelligently with them,” Patricia says, “Younger kids are not my forte.”
Patricia began her teaching career at St. Vincent de Paul School in East Haven. She was a student teacher there, and was actually all set to work for the Knights of Columbus because she hadn’t gotten a teaching job.
“I got called on Labor Day that the teacher that I had student taught under was leaving,” says Patricia, “So that was pretty cool.”
After teaching there for 14 years, Patricia decided to stay home with her children. Then, she returned to teaching as a paraprofessional at Joseph Melillo Middle School, where she has been for the past 21 years.
Now, she teaches social studies to 8th grade students, a role she has had since 1999. She is enthusiastic about it because of her love of history.
“I think I love it more than they do,” she says.
One thing Patricia likes to do is make history topics relevant by comparing them to current events, such as comparing former President Andrew Jackson with current President Donald Trump.
Patricia says that it’s important for students to get involved in current events and to know what’s going on in the world. In fact, she can see a correlation between history and current events.
“I think that’s one of the reasons why we study the past,” says Patricia, “So that you learn from your mistakes and that you don’t repeat them.”
However, teaching in this day and age does have challenges. She said that English may not be the first language for some students, class sizes are quite large, and some students have learning disabilities.
She says that trying to reach every student every day is difficult and that students learn in different styles, so it sometimes feels like she needs to reinvent herself every single period.
While there may be challenges to overcome with students, Patricia says that the most rewarding part of teaching is having students come back after she’s taught them, saying they can appreciate and understand what she was trying to do for them.
“So many of them have come back, and so many of them I still see and keep in touch with,” Patricia says, “I work with three, maybe four people that I taught.”
She says it is very rewarding when she sees former students become successful and happy adults. An example that she gave was of State Representative Michael DiMassa, a former student of hers who successfully ran for office in West Haven.
On a day-to-day basis, Patricia says she loves teaching content and history, and enjoys having an interactive class.
“A lot of the things we talk about are opinions,” she says, “I have no problem if their opinion is different from mine as long as they support their opinion.”
While she loves history and teaching it to students, Patricia says that there are two things that she wants students to learn. The first is to always know what’s going on in the world and make informed and positive decisions. The second is to make sure to vote.
She says that if people complain about something, they need to be involved to be able to do something about it.
“I think to me, that’s more important than some of the stuff we subject them to,” Patricia says, “If you can talk about the past in relationship to what’s going on today, that’s a good thing for these kids.”
Patricia has always enjoyed a more traditional approach to teaching students, saying that she loves her textbooks and map exercises, which she knows is becoming an outdated style. She said her career is winding down, and she’ll probably go another year and that will be it.
She said she goes to the library all the time, and asks if she can get can get a job there if she’s ready to retire.
“I think if I had to do it again, I’d be a librarian,” she says.