With the 2017-2018 school year starting, students will need all the cheering up they can get. The best way to cheer them up is when they first walk into class, and love their teacher. Victoria Skiffington, a graduate from Merrimack College is very qualified to begin her teaching career.

Victoria Skiffington is a new teacher at Salisbury Elementary School, but not a new staff member. Her previous job has been as a special ed teacher at Salisbury Elementary, meaning she already knows some of the ropes of teaching. Her former mentor Donna Castantini is confident that she will excel as a teacher. “I can tell you she shows much enthusiasm and dedication in order to be an effective teacher which her students will surely benefit from”, Donna said. For a new teacher, the first day is filled with many different emotions.

“It was very stressful but it went by so fast. It was really fast, but I liked it because it was so fast paced.” She said her first year of teaching has gone well  so far for her and her past experiences and jobs, which have shaped her for the job she is taking on this year.

Ms.Skiffington’s love for teaching was what brought her to study it in college. For her undergraduate education she attended the University of New Hampshire. She came to UNH expecting to study business, but within 2 weeks she knew that business wasn’t for her.  For her Masters Degree she attended Merrimack College, which she stated was very different from UNH. “Merrimack was similar to my high school, very small. So I wanted something very different (UNH).”  She previously has done many community services projects in high school and loved the way it felt to help people. Her community service project entailed her working at a school, and she loved the way it felt.

“There’s no other job without a teacher, all of your students start here. One of my students wants to be a breakdancer, and I was like if you can’t count to 8, you’re not going anywhere. I love the fact that I can have such an impact on my students.”

As many kids know, strict teachers aren’t always the most well-liked teacher. However, a teacher who is too easy going and easy won’t ever be taken seriously. So, the description of a good teacher would be in between those two types of teachers. Luckily, for Ms.Skiffington’s fifth grade class, they have that hard-working, nice teacher. Mackenzie Chaisson, a student in Ms.Skiffington’s class, has so far loved her 5th grade teacher.

“She doesn’t go fast, she explains stuff when people don’t get it, and she’s not really bad at anything”, said Mackenzie. For being a teacher in 5th grade, she needs to be good at teaching all subjects the students study. Mackenzie gave us some light on what subjects Ms.Skiffington is best at teaching in class. “She’s the best at teaching Math and English, because she explains it really good and slowly.”

Ms.Skiffington explained to me how her previous job has helped her remarkably so far. Her experience for this job has really been brought out in her first few weeks of teaching 5th grade. In her previous years before becoming a teacher in 5th grade, she was as a teacher in the behavior room at Salisbury Elementary, which is definitely different than her new job.

“I worked with social and emotional distressed students, so I only had six kids, so this is my first general education classroom and as much as I like the setting that I used to work at, my mind goes 20 different ways every day with so many students. I just love it.” Similar to her previous job, she is teaching all subjects this year to her class.