|
 
Teacher Mykael Wright’s
students surprise him with their wit. One student said he
would grow up to be president and get the country out of
its deficit by writing postdated checks.
|
Learning
From Mr. Wright
By Chris Blose
At MU, Mykael Wright was a popular guy. He
served as vice president and the first black president of the
Missouri Students
Association (MSA) and helped found a popular student-run designated-driver
program. He also became MU’s second black Homecoming King.
Now, as a seventh- and eighth-grade teacher
in Phoenix, Wright, BA ’03, isn’t always that popular.
His status as a “cool teacher” drops a little every
time he sends one of his students to detention for using forbidden
phrases, including “shut up,” one of his pet peeves.
The 22-year-old didn’t become an English
and social studies teacher to boost his ego, though, and his
time in MSA prepared him for negative feedback as well as positive.
He joined the Teach
For America program, which recruits teachers for schools
in low-income areas, because he wanted a job that would provide
rewards beyond merely being able to pay the rent.
“I think about the people who have
been big influences on my life,” Wright says. “The
majority of them have been teachers.”
In October 2002, Wright
and MU senior Karen-Marie Grooms graced MU’s 2002
Homecoming Court as king and queen. Each year, the Homecoming
court represents the most outstanding in character, leadership
and school pride that MU has to offer.
|
As for the location
of his teaching, he also had an ulterior motive for requesting
Phoenix: “Honestly, I just wanted
to go someplace warm with professional basketball, football
and baseball.”
Wright gets to indulge his taste for sports by watching MU games
with fellow MU Alumni Association members in the Phoenix chapter,
and he works as head coach for basketball and assistant coach
for football at his school.
And in the classroom, he is actually
popular much of the time. For every challenge, there is a reward.
His students are learning to think about the words they use and
show self-restraint. Their parents have complimented him on his
ability to get students of that age to pay attention, and he’s
somehow gotten them to “beg to read as opposed to dreading
to read.”
Wright has never been a morning person, but
once he’s standing
in front of his class, he doesn’t mind the early hours.
He doesn’t want to teach forever, but he’s so sure
he’s made the right decision for now that he plans to
keep teaching even after finishing his two-year commitment
to Teach For America.
Part of that desire to continue comes
from Wright’s love
of a youthful atmosphere. To him, kids are just more fun than
adults, and certainly more earnest. “They’re real,”
he says. “They don’t sugarcoat. They just tell it
how it is.”
Archives
| Comments | Home SUBSCRIPTIONS
Subscribe
| Change Your
Address | Unsubscribe
Copyright © 2007 — Curators of the University of Missouri
DMCA and other copyright information.
All rights reserved.
An equal opportunity/ADA institution.
Published by the Mizzou Alumni Association
Questions? Comments? E-mail comments@mizzoualumni.org
Last Update:
November 15, 2007
|
