by Alyssa VanBuren (8th)
“I was incredibly excited and grateful to come back to CMS after finishing the first trimester last year on the 7th grade green team.” Although with these exciting and truly electrifying emotions 8th grade English teacher now on the orange team is feeling she is also feeling very anxious with the new adjustment and return.
This new addition to the orange team is none other than Colonial School District Alumni Ms. Renner. “As a child, (she) was involved in chorus. (She) always loved choir and wish(ed) it was still something she could be a part of today. She also ha(s) fond memories of being in Mr. Hankins' classroom; She always felt very safe and heard in his room because he is such a warm and incredible teacher. She ha(s) a core memory of getting dressed up and rehearsing my lines for the wax museum - (She) was poet Emily Dickinson.”
In school she was a very involved student and despite what she ended up doing and all her commitments to the subject of English she ended up resenting the career path she herself even ended up taking. She in fact wanted to become a photographer.
Her entire life she’d been told she should be a teacher. Then, as a senior at PW, she discovered that applying to art school required much more than just snapping images, and sadly, she was not able to draw. So, on a whim, she made the decision to enroll at West Chester University and pursue a dual degree in English and education. She is happy with the choice she made in retrospect. She is thankful to be in her current position and can now see why many saw this as her calling.
She also noticed that as you get through your journey at middle school you learn the skill of self-governing. She described it as “autonomy”. Although it is a switch of one year she commented that from that year you're mature. And as that switch is made you become more mature and she observed the emotional and quite astonishing of how quickly the capability to navigate parts of the world that are more apparent in high school.
Let's all welcome Ms. Renner to CMS!