The Trottier Newspaper is an option as an elective to take in 7th grade. There are 3 teachers that run the elective, Mrs. Grimley, Mrs. Morris, and Mrs. Penzone. All three of these teachers teach English language arts. Mrs. Grimley teaches 6th and 7th grade ELA. Mrs. Penzone teaches 7th grade, one 6th grade reading class, and one 8th grade literacy class with Mrs. Morris. Lastly, Mrs. Morris teaches 6th, 7th, and 8th grade literacy. All these teachers have lots of knowledge in the subjects of writing and reading, but many people don’t know much about their lives outside of school.

Mrs. Grimley had so much to say for our questions and we took in every bit of it. She has 1 son, Ian, who is a 7 year old that loves musicals. Her wife is originally from Puerto Rico, where they love traveling, except in the summers when it is around 90 degrees. She also has the desire to travel farther west in the world to places like Europe. She is a woman who loves hiking with her family, reading and writing, decorating, and rumor has it, she is a good gardener. Mrs. Grimley started college as a journalist, but she wanted to work with kids, and by the influence of her mother, she switched to education. She wanted to teach literature because that was her major and she enjoyed watching her students develop as readers and writers. As for her favorite book, she loves The Outsiders by S.E. Hilton. This was the first book that addicted her to reading and writing. It made her want more of it, and provided a big impact on her life as a child. She loves reading and states, “I like getting lost in the stories and would rather read than watch TV. I liked writing because I played with words, and did highschool newspaper.” To get more into her life outside of teaching, she has 1 older brother, who has given her a niece and a nephew. She likes eating pizza and chocolate ice cream, and loves the color red. Her favorite movie currently is the new Wonka, because it gives her a window to the past because of the old movies, and she can watch it with her son. She loves the fall season, which is when the new school year starts. Speaking of the start of the school year, she prefers the beginning of the school year over the end, probably the opposite opinion of most kids. She gets a fresh start and meets new students and also discovers the new curriculum. Lastly, if she wasn’t a teacher she would be a writer or an Interior decorator. She obviously loves writing, but along with it being less exhausting, she also loves decorating and changing the feel of a room. 

Mrs. Morris also did not disappoint with the amount of information she gave us. Mrs. Morris has one son and one daughter. Her son is 24 and is named Cameron. Her daughter is named Ashley and she is 21. She is the oldest of 2 kids, with a younger brother. She liked going to Iceland with her kids but since they are older now she wants to start to travel more and more. As a young adult in college she wanted to be a prosecutor or attorney. She had worked for an attorney for a little bit, but it wasn’t her favorite. While she was working there she created a training program which showed her that she loved teaching and wanted to become a teacher. Speaking of jobs, if she wasn’t working as a teacher she would want to become a F.B.I profiler. She has always been interested in crime and thinks it would be fascinating to interview and learn about criminals’ thought processes. As a young child, all she did was read books. She feels like she is able to interact with the world and feels brave enough to do stuff that she wouldn’t do in the real world. Also, she likes getting attached to characters but it took until Covid for her to really enjoy writing, when she started to write poetry to express her feelings. Mrs. Morris enjoys reading, writing, hiking, and has recently begun to knit. She can also cook, but would like to learn how to use a ukulele. Her favorite food is filet mignon, but as for her favorite snack, she likes Doritos. Her favorite color is green, and she likes the movie Fried Green Tomatoes. The book series she likes over everything else is the Harry Potter series because a student recommended it for her. She was not a big fan of fantasy books but loved the characters in the story. She also used it to read with her son. She prefers summer because she likes the time she gets to spend with her kids. Mrs. Morris is one of the only teachers that gets to teach all 3 grades. Because of this, she likes the beginning of the school year over the end for mostly the same reasons as Mrs. Grimley. She gets to meet new kids and loves to see them develop over the years.

Mrs. Penzone was equally great with answering the questions we gave her, and she put a lot of thought into these responses. She has 2 kids, A daughter Olivia who is 11 and a son Asher who is 7. Like her son Asher, she was the younger of 2. She had an older brother but liked being younger because she got to learn what not to do. When her brother got in trouble, she would remember it and not do it when she got older. Mrs. Penzone says that the best place she has visited is Disney World, although she would love to go to London and travel all around Europe. When talking about how she started teaching, Mrs. Penzone stated, “I kind of fell into it, I was an English major and wanted to teach elementary but had no options and found one in middle school.” If Mrs. Penzone was not a teacher, she would want to be doing a job involving theater production. She wanted to be a production major for theater before she decided to become a teacher, but she works on the school plays as a choreographer. Growing up she was a dancer and went to theater, and of course also loved reading. Her favorite book series, along with Mrs. Morris, is the Harry Potter series. She likes the books because of how the “world is created in the characters.” Another book she enjoys most is Little Woman. She started reading it in middle school and just kept going back to it. She loves reading because she likes to escape to different books and different worlds. It also helps her de-stress and get away from what’s going on in the present time. Her favorite color is yellow, and she loves peanut butter cups. Her favorite season is summer, because of her dislike of the cold and not liking to go outside in winter. Along with both other teachers, her favorite part of the school year is the start. She gets to meet new students, and gets a fresh start each year. Lastly, her favorite show is Schitt’s Creek because of the humorous episodes. 

As you can see, all these teachers are some of the most interesting ELA teachers in the school. During our interviews, the teachers answered our questions with full thought and they made sure that we had everything that we needed. These teachers were great to interview and hearing about their lives outside of school really gave us a good background about them.