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2010-03-11

2010-03-09

2010-01-19

Agriculture

Lifestyles

Saturday, November 07, 2009 12:00 PM

Photo by Elliot J. Sutherland/The Ottawa Herald

Mark Paquette, instrumental music teacher at Ottawa Middle School, leads a band practice group Thursday afternoon as his son, Cale Paquette, 14, standing at right, helps a student follow along with the music. Cale, who is now a freshman at Ottawa High School, was in band class with his father for three years.

Teachers face balancing act when their kids are students

By RACHEL HAWKINS, Herald Staff Writer

Mark Paquette isn’t your typical teacher at Ottawa Middle School.

For three years, he played the role of father and teacher during school hours. His son, Cale, was in his band class.

“He didn’t play the instrument I played,” Paquette said. “I like to think I branched him out to play different woodwind instruments.”

Like Paquette, Chanlynn Tatum also plays the role of mother and teacher during school hours. Her oldest daughter, Cailin, is a sophomore at Ottawa High School.

When Tatum interviewed to become the freshman and junior English teacher at the high school, she told the principal she never wanted her daughters in her classes.

“That’s the one thing I asked,” Tatum said. “To not ever teach my own child.”

Tatum said teaching her own children would be extremely difficult to do.

“I just said I couldn’t do that,” she said.

Although her own child is not in her classes, some of her daughter’s closest friends are in classes she teaches.

“Being in the classroom with her friends isn’t bad,” she said. “The hardest part is having her friends over at my house.”

Tatum says while she knows her daughter needs to have that social interaction with her friends, she would enjoy some time without her students around.

“I see them all day,” she said. “When I’m at home, I would like to be home without them there.”

Many of Paquette’s students were his son’s friends, and they often would come and practice after school hours in the band room.

“My room was always open to him and his friends,” he said. “It was a good experience for him and for me.”

Tatum said her daughter’s friends and her students are polite and act the same way in class.

“Her really close friends usually speak more freely once they get to know me,” she said.

Tatum, Cailin and her youngest daughter, Alec, ride together to school in the morning. She said it is a bonding time for them, but Cailin usually get’s a ride home from school with a friend.

“She needs her friend time,” Tatum said. “Which is fine with me.”

Cailin often will come into her mother’s classroom to say hello during the school day.

“She likes being able to do that,” she said.

Although her other daughter is younger, she also never will have her mom for a teacher.

“She would be the one that is fine with it,” she said. “She’s the one that is more interested in academics, where the older one is more interested in socialization.”

Like Tatum, Paquette’s other child, a daughter, never will be in his class.

“She’s older, and she just wanted to sing,” he said. “She didn’t have any classes with me.”

Paquette said while his son is now a freshman at the high school and no longer in his classroom, he doesn’t think his son minded having him as a teacher.

“I never got a feeling he resented being in my class,” he said. “I didn’t make him call me Mr. Paquette or anything. He just always called me Dad.”

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Teachers face balancing act when their kids are students

By RACHEL HAWKINS, Herald Staff Writer

E-mail this story to a friend | Print this article | Enjoy the convenience of home delivery of The Ottawa Herald.

E-mail this story to a friend | Print this article |
Enjoy the convenience of home delivery of The Ottawa Herald.