New teachers begin new jobs

By Kevin Miller
Magis staff writer


At the beginning of every school year, the deluge of new freshmen is accompanied by the comparative trickle of new faculty. While freshmen swarm the campus like rats, the new teachers are much easier to miss, often only being noticed by those they teach. In fact, when I surveyed a group of three students and a teacher, none could name more than two of these new additions.
But despite the perception, there are actually many new faculty arrivals at the school. First of all, Mr. Henri DeYbarrondo is returning for his first full year at Strake, and Mr. Trip Norkus remains after his Alumni Service Corps term expired to continue teaching. Mr. Barrett O'Connell, who worked on SAT prep here last year, is now actually teaching English and history. In addition, Coach Ken Savannah, who had coached football in the past, now officially works for the school as a strength coach.
There are also four new Alumni Service Corps members here this year. Mr. Jack Bonner and Mr. Will Gray are teaching English, and Mr. Andy Pruett and Mr. Chris Theesin are teaching government.
Mr. Jamy Champenoy is joining the counseling department full time to relieve the ever-growing workload on Strake's counselors, and Mrs. Leslie Clinton comes in to teach English. To try to find out what it's like for one of these new arrivals, I talked in depth to Mrs. Clinton.
Mrs. Clinton told me that these first few weeks of school have been excellent and that everyone has been very helpful. Her road to teaching here took her through the University of St. Thomas, where she earned her bachelor's degree in English, and to LSU for graduate school. However, when she married her husband last November, they decided to move to Houston. Due to her husband's connection with Strake (he is an alumnus and a friend of such notables as Mr. Kornegay, Mr. Lojo, and Mr. DeYbarrondo), she learned of a job opening in the English department. She pursued it, and now she's here.
Contrary to popular belief, teachers apparently have lives outside of school. Mrs. Clinton takes great joy in live music, attending as many concerts as she can. These concerts have ranged from notoriously angry bands such as Metallica and Rage Against the Machine to more mellow jazz bands and well-known jam-band Phish. She also enjoys writing (what did you expect from an English teacher?) and interestingly, "brass rubbing". This involves painstakingly copying inscriptions from historic places like cathedrals, producing surprisingly accurate replicas.
Knowing that she was an English teacher, I decided to ask Mrs. Clinton what her favorite word was. She thought for a moment, looking pensively at the wall of her office, until she replied, "Spyooney".
"Spyooney...wait, what?" I replied.
She repeated, "Spyooney. I like the sound of it."
Confused, I asked her how to spell it. Seeing the difficulty in spelling such an obscure (non-existent?) word, she changed her answer to "chocolate".
Having discovered so much about Mrs. Clinton, I still hadn't gone after the most important bit of information about her: how easy or hard her class is. I accosted several freshmen to ask who their English teacher was, but no luck. However, one freshman was overheard saying "Mrs. Clinton is nice, and she smiles a lot...while she gives us really hard assignments." To corroborate this sentiment, I turned to my best (and journalistically, most illegitimate) resource: my brother.
My brother is in Mrs. Clinton's class, so I assumed he'd have the inside information I need to give my readers. But what I didn't count on was his notorious reticence. When asked what he thought of Mrs. Clinton's class, he replied, "I don't know." Perturbed by his lack of comment, I thought for a fleeting moment that perhaps the school could use more teachers and fewer freshmen. But then remembering that more teachers would mean more classes and that the freshmen in my Spanish class are surprisingly entertaining, I purged that idea from my mind.
What I learned from all these experiences is that perhaps upperclassmen should make an effort to try to meet these new teachers. While that may not seem to be the most exciting prospect in the world, these teachers are actually interesting and friendly people, at least when they're not giving out homework.