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10/03/2018 08:30 AMLiam Callahan has a quote on the whiteboard in his classroom at North Haven Middle School (NHMS) from Maya Angelou.
“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty,” it reads.
Liam has a book on his desk containing 20,000 other quotes and a vast Internet resource for when that runs dry. An intervention specialist, he uses the quotes to connect with his students. This one in particular struck a chord with an 8th grader he’s been working with since 6th grade.
“I always have a quote on the board,” Liam says. “[This month’s theme] is positive self-esteem. A lot of kids have those self-defeating comments.”
Often, Liam finds a way to make the quotes on his wall connect to the problems his kids are facing at any given moment.
Liam works with students in every grade level who need more help in school, students who need help academically or in their behavior. His specialty, however, lies with building character rather than a particular subject matter.
“[I’m] working with some kids that need some extra help, maybe a deeper relationship with an adult,” Liam says. “I like the challenge and I like the deeper relationship working with kids that might need the attention.”
He comes to this position with 15 years’ experience teaching in a self-contained alternative classroom in Vermont, where he taught students with similar needs in smaller class sizes without typical middle school subject rotations.
“I want to know not just about how’d that quiz go, how’d that homework assignment go…Tell me about you. I want to know about you as a student,” Liam says.
In Vermont, Liam took his students on monthly trips as a way to incentivize and reward good behavior. Many of these trips had a community service function, such as their trees and streams project during which the students planted trees to prevent erosion affecting farmland.
Sometimes the trips were more recreational. One year, they tapped maple trees. Another year, the students visited to the Vermont Air National Guard to watch F-16 jets take off.
“Anything that I could make a connection and see a value, we went out and did,” Liam says. “I’m looking forward to eventually make those community connections here.”
High school gym teacher Dave Fazzuoli invited some of Liam’s group to participate in an anti-bullying rally at a ropes course in Middletown.
“Just some different opportunities to get the kids out there, experience different things, feeling good about themselves, looking forward to coming to school,” Liam says.
In Vermont, Liam and some of his students found an old refrigerator door on the school’s property, much of which was previously a golf course. One of their projects together was to clean up the area and, in the end, restore this door.
“I used to hand papers back to students and say they were refrigerator worthy,” Liam says. “If their papers were 70 or above, they went on there…Their grades just shot up.”
The refrigerator door isn’t the only thing Liam hopes to bring back to North Haven. One of his class’s projects in Vermont was to perform a trash audit. The kids collected much of the schools garbage and sorted out the recyclables.
The NHMS Fill ‘Em Up Fridays began in April, lasting through the end of the school year and exceeding their goal of 10,000 cans and bottles, the proceeds from which return to the school in the form of a student activities fund ready to be tapped into when the staff finds a need for it.
“[The recycling program] definitely wasn’t stemming right from me,” Liam says. “It’s more of a collective effort—and I use the pun purposely…[NHMS Assistant Principal] Paul Castiglione had the idea.”
Castiglione obtained large flip-top recycling bins from a local company and the school began collecting cans and bottles from the school cafeteria and the staff room. Liam’s students have been a big part of that collection effort. Eventually, they decided to leave the bins out for parents to turn in their bottles.
“[Last year] it caught on pretty quick,” Liam says. “It’s been a bit slow to start the year.”
During dismissal on Fridays, parents can bring their cans and bottles to add to the program’s collection to be redeemed for a few cents apiece to benefit the school. Liam’s goal for the program’s first full school year is to surpass 40,000 cans and bottles.
To submit a nomination for Person of the Week, contact the reporter at n.hughart@shorepublishing.com.