{"id":20103,"date":"2023-05-01T15:12:39","date_gmt":"2023-05-01T15:12:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/160-news\/?p=20103"},"modified":"2026-01-18T23:01:21","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T23:01:21","slug":"a-passion-for-teaching-and-teaching-for-passion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/2023\/05\/a-passion-for-teaching-and-teaching-for-passion\/","title":{"rendered":"A Passion for Teaching, and Teaching for Passion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>Landed is an ongoing series where we ask recent graduates how things are going post-graduation.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><b>By Dennis Krolevich \u201826<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Nick Shriver \u201818<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sociology major, History minor, Legal Studies concentration<br><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Blaine, Minn.<br><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Currently working at Little Wound School in South Dakota as an 8th and 9th grade English and Social Studies teacher and high school football coach.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><b>Last three things you did before your current role:<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">An internship with the non-profit Project Footsteps.<\/span><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Worked at Minneapolis Parks and Recreation providing career readiness and technology proficiency programs for high school students.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Student-worker in Macalester\u2019s sociology department.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><b>What did you learn?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">During my internships and employment, I learned that I like working with kids and in an educational capacity. What I also learned specifically when working in the sociology department is that it\u2019s so cool to see your professors outside of class and get to know them better. The professors there inspired and shaped a lot of the way that I teach. Knowing them better taught me who I want to be as a teacher, which is personable and&nbsp; someone who knows their students and what\u2019s going on in their lives.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><b>I never thought when I was a first-year that\u2026<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I was going to be studying political science and legal studies, but ended up studying sociology in my second semester.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In my first year, I did legal studies right away. I thought I was going to go to law school and do that whole thing. I am very thankful for those legal studies courses, because they showed me that that\u2019s not at all what I want to do with my life.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><b>What has surprised you since graduation?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Even though I wasn\u2019t in education studies and only took one ed-studies class at Macalester, I was able to hop into the role of being an effective teacher. There are some growing pains with figuring out class management and some of those other things you might have in your first year of teaching. But I think Macalester set me up with a lot of the skills, mindsets, ideas, and beliefs that I think you need to have in order to be an effective teacher. You have to be able to relate to your students.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">It\u2019s also important to have different perspectives in the classroom. I want students to not take what I\u2019m saying as scripture, but to ask questions. I want them to push back. I think the learning environment that I had at Macalester is what I try to replicate somewhat in the classroom.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><b>Do you have any advice for current students?&nbsp;<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The best advice I can give to anyone about college is to just gut it out. If you\u2019re having a hard time, just stick with it. A light will click for you eventually, and once it does, it\u2019s easygoing. But you have to gut it out until you get to that point. I also recommend finding a major, a class, or just something that you love to do. Senior year, my honors paper was like 45 pages, but I loved doing it. It wasn\u2019t a chore for me.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nick Shriver &#8217;18 is currently working at Little Wound School in South Dakota as an 8th and 9th grade English and Social Studies teacher and high school football coach.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1077,"featured_media":20105,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","mediatype-articles"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"fields":{"article_type":[8],"flickr_photoset_id":"","youtube_id":"","square_thumbnail":false,"press_photos":false,"story_title":"","story_caption":"","rotations":false,"maps":false,"marker_title":"","marker_text":"","geographic_location":false,"feature_embed":"","custom_link_url":"","news_icon_name":"","image_options":false,"main_feature_story":"","custom_image":false,"custom_feature_title":"","custom_feature_caption":"","custom_markup":"","custom_markup_link":"","custom_markup_title":"","custom_markup_caption":"","byline":"","post_thumbnail_style":"default","press_downloads":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1077"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20103"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30177,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20103\/revisions\/30177"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}