Sarah Webber is a new English teacher at Camas High School (CHS) who arrived after working at Heritage High School for five years. In comparison to her previous station, she finds the students at CHS to be more self-driven in some areas, then not in others. Regardless, her students are a great motivator to her when teaching and life get difficult.

A Camas local, she made the switch from Evergreen to the Camas school district because of the location, so she can spend more time with her family because her children go to daycare in Camas. Another factor that went into her decision to move was that she would get more interaction with families as a teacher, which she thinks Heritage High School lacked.

It was contrary to her initial belief that she would ever become a teacher. Seeing her father work as a teacher made her believe that teaching was not the job for her. But after being a substitute teacher for a year, she found that she really enjoyed teaching. 

“English has always been for me a very fun subject. I wasn’t always a good reader, but once I got into it, I couldn’t stop. My dad was a musician; he taught me how to analyze, and that transferred really well to literature,” Webber said about why she decided to teach English. 

But being a teacher does bring its own rollercoaster.

“I also feel like sometimes, I don’t know, I have these ups and downs where I’m like, ‘Does English really matter? Do I matter? The universe?’ Those big questions of ‘am I doing what I need to do?’” Webber said.

In moments where she feels lost, students help the most. 

“They’ll tell me what they’re getting from things, like at the end of units, we have opportunities to talk about what went well, what didn’t go well,” Webber said. “Usually, people are really good at thinking of what they would like to do, and those like-to-dos really help me focus myself in terms of what do students want, and what I’m doing well.” 

The feedback from her students helps her focus on what she should do to help them learn, and what is working for them already. For example, after some student input, her next unit will be centered around short stories. Her goal is to incorporate stories from a variety of time frames, author diversity, and war narratives. 

Another topic that she would like to teach this year is an independent novel unit that allows each student to go at their own pace dissecting a story of their choice, which she had done before at Heritage.

When choosing the curriculum, Webber likes to keep in mind how it is relevant to the students and whether or not it will help them in the future. 

“Not every student is going to go to college, and that is perfectly OK. I figure as long as I’m making sure those people are well-rounded, or try to help them be more well-rounded before they leave high school… That’s my goal,” she said.

Adding on to her goals as a teacher, she is striving to be more reasonable about how much work she is handing out to students.

“What stresses the students stresses me out, and [their] homework is my homework,” Webber said. “There is such a thing as doing too much and thinking that you need to.”