Working in a serious workplace at a young age can be stressful, especially working in education. So this brings me to the question, what is the honest reality of being a young teacher in a high school? 

Who is Mr. Stuart?

Mr. Stuart is a fairly new teacher to Muscatine High School, and is also one of the youngest teachers, being 29. Stuart graduated college from St. Ambrose University in 2017. He officially became a certified teacher during his last year of college at only 22 years old.

The MHS Community

Stuart started working in MHS’s social studies department in 2022. Within these 2 years, Stuart has spent most of his time working alongside his co-workers, Mr. Smith and Mr. Iosbaker. He considers them some of his biggest influences as a teacher. He has an appreciation for their teaching styles, but even more so as people.

Regardless of Stuart’s role as a teacher, his students continue to teach him different things as well.

“Students always teach me and remind me to consider the humanity of other people and care for the needs of other people, the most pressing needs before we can try to handle bigger things,” said Stuart.

One of the reasons he thinks so highly of the Muscatine community is due to the support system that Muscatine High School has from the city.

Stuart states,“I wanted to be at a school with a community open to teachers and students trying to make a difference.”

Stuart’s Recognition

With Stuart being such a young teacher, it definitely gained some publicity and recognition to his name. Stuart has since been mentioned in multiple sites such as, https://www.afsusa.org/ and https://discovermuscatine.com/. 

In addition to this, on January 18th, 2024, Stuart, along with three teachers, received a staff recognition award. Stuart’s coworker, Mr. Smith was the one who nominated him for this award.

Smith states,”I wrote about him helping other teachers around him, running a breakout training session with me during one of our staff development days, and helping other teachers develop their classes in our department.”

 The Declining Issue

Despite his positive outcomes, there are some challenging aspects that he faces as well. One of the most prominent issues is the perception of being a teacher. 

Due to the declining number of teachers, he feels that this issue is being surrounded by the overwhelming amount of effort that now has to be put in. Along with that, he also takes note of how there is a decline in parental support that leads to students just not caring.

“If we want a better school we need to fix those things,” said Stuart. “Honestly, the best way to help a kid succeed is to remind them that they want to succeed, and be there to help along the way.”

Students Success is all based on their motivation. Stuart also converses in how teachers investing time and getting to know their students definitely has a benefit for their success.

The Honest Reality

“Something I wish people, and especially kids, knew about being a first year teacher is that it is hard and really stressful,” said Stuart.

Being a teacher and learning how to adjust to a different environment comes with a bunch of different difficuly factors, which can sometimes be a little overwhelming for some.

”It’s really hard when you’re like 22/23 trying to figure out how to manage life and also do your job at the same time,” said Stuart.

Although managing stress isn’t the easiest thing to do, Stuarts shared that in his third year of teaching he really got better at dealing with the stress. So I guess the honest reality is that criticism and stress play a role in situations that make them difficult, but very important.