By REBECCA OLIVEIRA, TOBY PITAN, & LEILA GREIGE
Miranda Libkin is making her encore at teaching at Malden High School.
Many teachers and students admire her bubbly, funny personality and how she goes out of her way to always be there to help her students in whatever way she can. Not only is she a funny person to be around, Libkin is also a great storyteller, which goes hand-in-hand with teaching English and Drama/Theater. When asked to describe her as a teacher, Damian Aufiero stated that Libkin “loves students maybe more than teaching,” and that “she’s a very kind and gentle person”. According to Aufiero, Libkin is the kind of person who always tries to “find the positive in people…she’s so able to focus on the good things that keeps everyone in good perspective.”
Libkin says she is glad to be a returning member to Malden High School’s staff and to be back in the warm and friendly environment that MHS has to offer. During her absence last year, Libkin taught English Language Arts (ELA), to middle schoolers–mainly sixth graders–at Forestdale Elementary School here in Malden. She says that she “totally admire[s] people who teach middle school but [she] [is] definitely a high school teacher.” While teaching middle school, Libkin found that she “really love[s] to help students make connections” whether it be “connecting [their] lives to the things [they] are reading, or maybe connecting two different characters together.”
English is only one of the subjects that Libkin teaches here at MHS. Libkin is also a Play Production (Play Pro) instructor who uses her extensive background in theatre and performance to help students hone their acting, dance, and storytelling skills. She appreciates the wide-range of the classes that she teaches and describes how one morning she went from teaching a dance combination to teaching an english class about article claims over the span of two periods. She says that it some ways she is adjusting to balancing Play Pro and English, especially as they are consecutive periods, but she also admits that “it will always probably be a little bit crazy.”
There have been a few major changes to the MHS faculty during Libkin’s absence. Dana Brown, the former Principal of MHS retired with Mr. Lombardi assuming the current role. She is beginning to familiarize herself with Mr. Lombardi as the new principal and says that “[she] [has] had really good conversations with him”. She says “it would have been nice to be here for his last year” and upon hearing about Mr. Brown Day, she says “[she] wish[es] [she] was [here] to be apart of that.” However, Libkin says that she’s relieved that not a lot of the things that she loves about MHS has changed since she left.
