Walking into the doors at Salisbury Elementary, was quite a scary experience for the fresh out of college teacher, Thurlow, especially when her job was switched last second. Ms. Thurlow prepared fo

r school with the expectation of being a part- time Pre-K teacher and part-time librarian teacher, but got promoted to a social emotion intervention teacher. Ms. Thurlow took the news well and was looking forward to her new job.
“I’m always up for a challenge” Thurlow said. Thurlow arrives at school a half an hour early and stays up to forty five minutes late just to help the children. She is committed to her job, and is one of those teachers who cares for all of her students individually.
Thurlow is a former Triton student. She graduated from Triton in 2011. She has lived in Newbury her whole life and still currently is there. After Triton she went to Umass Amherst to get a degree in teaching. Thurlow says that Umass did not do a good job preparing her for her teaching career, so she went to Salem State to get her masters where she learned a lot more. She has been a former camp counselor and a tutor which had really prepared her for working with children. She has always had a love for younger kids. Thurlow says she has always known she had wanted to become a teacher, approximately since second grade.
”When you know, you know” Thurlow said.
Thurlows first day went very well and she describes her co workers as “welcoming, friendly and supportive.” Her day first starts with meeting up with a teacher or supervisor. Then, she pulls out kids to work on reading, eats lunch and has a planning period. Then at the end of the day, she moves around the school helping out anywhere she can. Her schedule changes throughout each week.
In her job, the emotions of the kids become her main priority. Thurlow told us that every kid has his or her good and bad days.
“If you don’t go into it positive, nothing good will come from it”, Thurlow said. She feels as the year goes on it will become easier. She takes this as a challenge to become better.
“ This is a big learning curve that will help me become a better teacher”, says Thurlow.
From her times at Triton, Thurlow formed a bond with two of her former teachers, Ms. Margaret Flaherty and Mr. Chris Gette. Flaherty was a mentor to Thurlow and their families even knew each other. “It was meaningful to me that Korie came to my father’s wake when he passed.”said Flaherty. “It was especially touching to see her father beside her since he had known my dad” said Flaherty. Flaherty had taught the book club at the time when Thurlow was president of it. Throughout the four years of highschool, Flaherty got to know Thurlow well. She saw her as being “ a good student, competent, goofy and sweet”. Although Flaherty had no idea Thurlow would become a teacher, she wasn’t surprised. “She was open to working with other kids in class, could help peers who had lost the thread, she seemed to enjoy being in a classroom” shared Flaherty.
Gette thought very highly of Thurlow. “Hard working, curious, knew a variety of a lot of things, and lead her peers.” said Gette.
We had asked Thurlow if teaching is something she will see herself doing for the rest of her life. “Yes, I want to stay in the spectrum of grades 1-6, but I would take on any age level because this is something I love to do”, says Thurlow. Thurlow says that she uses different methods to get the kids to cooperate such as “the trampoline”. She tells the kids if they do a good job with their work they will have time to use the trampoline, which gets the kids to really focus. Not all kids focus the same way, so we asked Thurlow how she deals with that. “You have to find what motivates them, and get to know each kid individually.”