A Round Lake teacher whose entry into the teaching field was spurred by personal tragedy has been nominated as a finalist for the Golden Apple Awards for Excellence in Teaching, one of 30 teacher finalists out of almost 600 nominations.
Big Hollow Elementary fourth-grade teacher Kristina Lancaster talked about her lifelong desire to be a teacher, her teaching philosophy, and how she prepares her students for a new era of technology.
Contrary to what many of her students’ parents assume, Lancaster is a relative newcomer to teaching. She has worked in various fields previously, including as an attorney and journalist.
“I’ve wanted to be a teacher since I was in college, but everybody said, ‘Oh, there are so many teachers. You don’t want to be a teacher,’” she said.
When she was 45, she even successfully ran for the school district’s Board of Education, saying she hoped to “scratch the itch” for teaching.
But in late 2012, Lancaster’s 12-year-old son Alex, a middle schooler at Big Hollow Middle School, died in an accident at home, and she decided to move ahead with her dream.
“It was sort of like this impetus — ‘What am I going to do?’” Lancaster recalled. “I could have let it wreck everything, but I thought life is too short to not do what you want to do.”
Lancaster went back to school to get her master’s degree, and this is her ninth year teaching at Big Hollow Elementary. While she didn’t have a traditional path into the classroom, her breadth of experience and perspective, both professionally and as a parent, have proven invaluable.
‘Cool’ teachers
On Thursday afternoon, Lancaster’s class was working on an assignment reflecting on a Chinese story they read about a mythological archer. She walked around the classroom, asking and answering questions, and seeing what students were thinking. The fourth graders were talkative, but focused.
Lancaster said it’s her favorite grade to teach — old enough to really see their personalities emerge, including some sarcasm, but young enough that they still have an innocent admiration of teachers.
“They still think their teachers are kind of cool,” Lancaster said.
Both aspects were on display that afternoon. One student was determined to get high-fives from a reporter, and students gossiped about gaining fame in the local paper. When Lancaster said she was stepping out and that they were soon headed to their next class in 10 minutes, there was a lively debate over whether 10 minutes was “soon,” which she took with good humor.
But when one student completed a coloring assignment, and Lancaster held it up to show the class, the other students cheered and clapped.
New era
The students in Lancaster’s classroom are growing up in a different world from the one in which she was raised. Social media has created new challenges for both teachers and students, and made children who are, “in a way,” more naive while also knowing more, she said.
“They’re exposed to so much more, but I think a lot of times they don’t know the meaning of what they’re exposed to,” Lancaster said. “We get questions a lot that are difficult to answer, and I think social situations that we have to help kids navigate because we can’t do it for them, because they have to learn the skills to be able to do it.”
She’s worked on teaching children to discern what is trustworthy information and sources, especially in the era of artificial intelligence. Lancaster recalled a project they did on natural disasters, and how the kids initially assumed all the photos were AI-generated, even real ones.
“They just want to think everything is AI,” she said.
The inclusion of new technology into the kids’ education, such as AI, was important, Lancaster said. Teachers can’t get “bogged down” by outdated ideas or teaching methods.
“We have to teach these kids the skills they’re going to need in their century, and it’s a completely different place,” she said. “It’s our job to teach them what’s important now. The same things that we learned in the ’80s, ’90s (and) 2000s aren’t what they need anymore.”
But that doesn’t mean dropping the fundamentals. Teaching them critical thinking is all the more important, as is collaboration, perseverance and integrity, she said. Lancaster also finds ways to encourage the young students to read more, sometimes even buying books herself for the classroom if they express interest.
For Lancaster, the “most important thing” for a teacher is to build a relationship with the students, and see what motivates them and gets them excited to learn. The often-heard phrase is to meet kids where they’re at, but she admitted that isn’t her philosophy. She has higher expectations and has seen children rise to meet them.
“I want to pull them up to where I know they could be,” Lancaster said.
But success “isn’t the same for every student,” she said.
“They look at each other and they think ‘Oh, I’m not as smart as that person.’ But if you help them realize what growth is to them, personal growth, they can get really excited about learning and feel proud of themselves,” Lancaster said.
Although the final winner for the Golden Apple awards still hasn’t been announced, Lancaster said the nomination is validation that she made the right decision all those years ago to get into teaching.
“I remember standing up in my first substitute teaching classroom here,” she said. “It sounds corny, but I felt at home. This was where I was supposed to be.”
