Not only do teachers strive for excellence and the success of their students, but they also make it their goal to provide students with an educational experience by making sure their students’ mental health is up to par. Mrs.Glassberg, an English teacher at Bethpage High School, is one of the best examples of a teacher who truly cares about her students’ happiness and success. Mrs. Glassberg has a tremendous amount of passion for teaching with love and a need for humor and laughter. She believes bringing humor inside the classroom creates incredible energy being one of the reasons she loves her job. Not only does she provide educational courses that bring a challenge to the table but also broaden the horizons of her students’ education; With that in mind, she makes her classes very enjoyable by keeping all her students laughing with lots of jokes and constant motivation. 

The Eagles Cry: What made you realize you wanted to become a teacher?

Mrs.Glassberg: “ Well, when I was little I always wanted to be a teacher. I thought I was going to be a teacher. I used to play in the basement, take out a chalkboard, make up tests, and give them to my teddy bears. They would take the tests and I would grade them so I was playing at that point. I thought I was going to be an accountant. To me, teaching was more like a hobby and crunching numbers was more of a career. I went to college and took some education classes and had my first student teaching experience and once I did that I was like “oh my gosh I can’t believe I was going to do accounting”. I enjoy being with kids, teaching, and energy.”

The Eagles Cry: How would you describe your role as a teacher?

Mrs.Glassberg: “My job as a teacher, first and foremost, is to prepare students with their writing, speaking, and reading. First and foremost what’s supposed to be most important is the content students need to learn but that doesn’t take precedence when there is a problem. If all is well, education is the most important part but if things are not well then the material takes a backseat to the emotional and social well-being of kids, and helping them.”

The Eagles Cry: Are your relationships with your students you create over the years important to you?”

Mrs.Glassberg: “Absolutely. I still keep in contact with a group of students who I taught about 20 years ago. They found me, they have families and kids and it’s crazy to see how far they have come.” 

The Eagles Cry: Do you miss your students after they have moved on and graduated from your classes and high school?

Mrs.Glassberg: “ I think I miss the moments shared within the class because personalities are memorable. To me, miss means you’re gone forever and you’re not really gone forever. I think of it more like ‘They’re off doing amazing things! They Are living a wonderful life!’. My thoughts go to a positive place. With kids, I hope that when they’re with me in my class when they’re with me for 42 minutes that it’s not too torcherous but I hope they get something out of it. More like a real-world experience of thinking, you know my goal and I guess mostly my role as a teacher as well is to get people to think. Seriously the most important thing is to think to really truly think and really think things through.”

The Eagles Cry: What do you enjoy most about your job and the role you play as a teacher?

Mrs.Glassberg: “ I love the energy that the students bring to the table. I love it. When we were in quarantine last year I was so ready to come out and I said ‘ Please let me go back to work!’ because I missed it so much. I would say when you and your students start to connect and there’s that synchronicity right there when things are just starting to match up and everyone is engaged and we’re all in it together where it’s not necessarily where the teacher is in charge and we’re sharing a conversation, I love that energy. To me, we are all working towards a common goal in understanding a topic and we’re all enthusiastic about it, there’s nothing else like that. That to me is like being at a concert, you know when you’re at a concert and you feel all that energy from the crowd because everybody is like ‘I love them!!’. I know not everybody loves English,  so when everybody gets into it that’s really fun.

The Eagles Cry: How does it feel to know that your current and previous students look to you for help and guidance throughout their high school career whether its about college or personal life issues?

Mrs.Glassberg: “I would say it hits me on a deeper level knowing that there’s a deeper connection. That kids are able to see me for who I am, through a lesson and being a teacher. When you are teaching a lesson and kids can see me and my personality, I think it’s just on a whole other level. You don’t expect that to happen but when it does happen, you do feel like ‘wow…I feel like I’m valued in a different way’.”

The Eagles Cry: How do you manage to keep your class informative but enjoyable, funny, and interesting at the same time?

Mrs.Glassberg: “ You have to find the humor in the smallest thing, you have to try and find what’s funny and that to be is a life lesson. If you wanna make it through tough times and you can make a joke about it you’re in good shape. You’re going to be ok!” and that’s how I grew up. It was, you can either cry about it or you can laugh about it and just you gotta laugh at it, let’s try and find humor in anything and everything. You have to laugh, and if we’re not laughing… There’s a problem. We have to be laughing, and if you’re crying that’s okay but it has to lead to laughter at some point. I just love to laugh. I think humor is just what it’s all about.”

The Eagles Cry: What are your greatest strengths in teaching?

“ It’s hard to sum it up into one sentence but I think doing a good job and having fun doing it. I like that everyone has fun doing the job that needs to get done. I mean i’ve had classes over the years where it really wasn’t that much fun and those are the classes of mine that are very few and far between. We had moments in there where it was fun but overall not too fun. I mean, with your class we had SO much fun, i mean come on. We had a good group to begin with and you all worked. Let’s do the work and we can have fun doing it, which you guys did. We have to do the work and have fun but if one thing has to go, the fun has to go first, but as long as you can strike the balance between both and everyone can walk away adding something to their knowledge, I feel pretty good about myself.”

The Eagles Cry:  Do you ever learn from your students like how your students learn from you?

“Absolutely. Absolutely. And it’s when you get to know them is when you really start to appreciate it. Like ‘wow there are some amazing young people here’ and I wish that there was a little crystal ball to peek in on former students and be like ‘i wonder where they are now’ just to see where they go? It’s always amazing to me when a student catches up with me that I actually find out where they went and how they’ve been. I don’t know where you guys go, but people can find me, it’s very easy to find me, they know where I am and when students reach out and tell me what they have been up to I just love it. I’m just always in aw and they’re doing amazing things. It blows my mind all the amazing people you come across. I get to see you guys in your baby phase which is fun! Before you get out there and conquer the world I get to see that.”