Mrs. Howie teaches during T3
Hastings Senior High has a new addition to its staff. Denise Howie, a new English teacher, started her journey as a substitute teacher and student teacher at different schools throughout Hastings Public Schools in 2021. Now, after finishing her teaching degree, there is now a new English teacher at HHS.
Howie first attended Iowa State University, before coming to Hastings College to complete her teaching degree. Along with her teaching degree, she has an emphasis in technical writing and editing. Howie had continued to do work such as proofreading, copy editing, and book work for the Lutheran Digest after she graduated until taking a break to spend more time with her family.
Howie previously lived in Minnesota before moving to Hastings to begin teaching preschoolers. After she moved to Hastings, Howie began at Hawthorne Elementary as a library para. Her college credit then allowed her to begin substituting in elementary, middle school, and high schools. Her time subbing inspired her to change gears in her career to complete her teaching degree so she could teach full-time.
“…well, if I’m gonna sub, I might as well just get paid to be a teacher. So I went back to school,” Howie said.
When she taught at Grand Island Senior High for two school years: 2022-23 and 2023-24, Howie started as a new face in the school and had to get to know other teachers as well as getting out of her comfort zone. But at Hastings High, her kids had been through the school system, and she is familiar with those she is working with. GISH was foreign to Howie when she began, but it was also much larger than HHS.
“The first two months that I taught there, I never like wandered too far away from my room because I was afraid I was gonna get lost,” Howie said.
Now that she is at HHS, Howie learned to adapt from larger classes to smaller ones, as well as learning different habits to benefit her students’ learning. Howie’s new perspective on teaching is quite opposite from how she saw things before coming to HHS.
“I used to think, you know what, you gotta to be in school every day’… and now that I’ve been teaching, I realize that it’s not always a student problem… maybe there’s extenuating circumstances that are keeping them from being at school… now my mind set is, I’m going to give you as much as I can while you’re here,” Howie said.
Howie’s journey at HHS has only just begun, but she is not new to meeting new people, nor is she new to guiding students in the right direction.
