The Paw Print

By: Mo Eneh, Staff Writer

As the school year progresses, Payton welcomes several new students and teachers. I was honoured with the opportunity to speak to one of these new teachers: Ms. Augustine. 

Ms. Augustine is a fun-loving teacher aide who enjoys forming bonds and connections with students. She believes that students need to be recognized by far more than their academic ability, emphasizing their emotional and mental state as well. Using her diverse high-school experience, she opens her mind to students of all kinds. 

Outside of the classroom, Ms. Augustine is a fun-loving and outgoing person who enjoys visiting the lake in the summer, but would rather bask in the chilly air of fall, or the icy-cold snow. Though she comes from New York, she enjoys Chicago-style hotdogs and the city’s energy. She still prefers New-York-style pizza over Chicago’s traditional deep dish. In her free time, she can be found karaoking or reading her favourite books, “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind” and the Harry Potter series (which, interestingly, she grew up at the same pace with). She often reads coming-of-age and hero novels, finding inspiration in real life stories. 

Paw Print: What led you to come teach at Payton?

Ms. Augustine: I have this personal life trajectory where I have always been gravitated towards tutoring. Even in high school, I had worked with second grade students and developed this newfound desire to be a nurturing aspect to others, to the youth, the upcoming adults. So I wanted to nurture them.

Paw Print: How long have you been in education?

Ms. Augustine: That’s a tricky question. It was four years after college. But then there’s the tutoring background that I have in college. So about six years.

Paw Print: How has your experience been so far?

Ms. Augustine: “It has been really nice, I enjoy coming to work, I like being here [with] the energy, the students and the teachers. Everything is good”

Paw Print: Where did you grow up?

Ms. Augustine: I came from upstate New York, and I grew up in a small town called Ellenville. From there, I went to SUNY Potsdam, also [in] upstate New York, which is a state college. My high school was a very diverse school. It was diverse, but [also a] small pond. I did a lot of sports in high school. I did soccer. [Soccer] was my favorite, [and I also did] basketball, track, softball. I interchanged between [those,] so I did a lot of extracurricular activities. I overloaded myself with extracurriculars. I did theater shows, I did band, I did jazz band. It was excessive.

Paw Print: Did you eventually find a way to manage and balance all of these different interests you had in high school?

Ms. Augustine: I found it challenging to do homework. I would really encourage other students, or the students and the youth, to just prioritize sleep because it’s gonna come back and you’ll feel the repercussions.

Paw Print: How do you plan to support students in high school and prepare them for the future?

Ms. Augustine: My thoughts about preparing students that I interact with is getting to know as many students as I possibly can. And I interact with a lot of students throughout the day, and if I can give them any sort of gift between our interactions, I do. The knowledge that they are supported so that they can pursue their own healthy balance between school and personal life and personal needs. I really just want to teach kids or show kids how to apply self love, self care and honor their own selves, their genuine selves.

Paw Print: Yeah, that makes sense. 

Ms. Augustine: It’s really hard to know what that balance is when you don’t know who you are yet. And that’s what I found to be true. When I was in high school, I didn’t really know who I was and I was trying all these things, but I have felt so much pressure. If there was a little bit of relief or support, that’s what I would have wanted.

Paw Print: What do you believe are the most important challenges that high schoolers will face?

Ms. Augustine: Social pressures. I think there’s a lot of social pressures, and I think that it’s easy to feel obligated to someone else’s wants, someone else’s needs, or like a group of people. It’s alright to be alone, it’s all right to go to the library to study, it’s all right to do what you need to do. So I think social pressure is an intense pressure that people feel, [but] you don’t need to comply to everybody’s whims.

As a final note, Ms. Augustine wants people to take note of how her diverse background pushes her towards community-based approach to education, as well as how she has explored several fields and is committed to helping in any way possible with her experiences.  

With a diverse educational background and many different experiences from an exuberant and variegated extracurricular standpoint, Ms. Augustine wears many hats, allowing her to relate to a variety of people in several different ways. We welcome another unique view into Payton.