The only daughter of an elementary school teacher, with three older brothers in Centralia, Emily Rourke has been shaped as an educator since childhood. So it’s no surprise she was named this year’s Middle School Educator of the Year by the Snoqualmie Valley Schools Foundation.
Rourke, who earned a bachelor’s degree in history from UW, began substitute teaching middle school in Santa Cruz, Calif, and said she fell in love with the career. When she and her husband, Matt, started their family — they now have a 12 year-old daughter and 9-year-old son — they decided to move back to Washington, to North Bend, where she started teaching eighth grade at Snoqualmie Middle School, transitioning to Twin Falls more than three years ago when SMS became the Freshman Campus for Mount Si High School.
How did you come to education?
Rourke’s parents both had education backgrounds and her mother is a retired elementary school teacher.
“As soon as I could ‘work’ I was a babysitter, lifeguard and swim instructor, camp counselor, coach… all the jobs that say ‘I’m going to be a teacher.’ I ignored all of those signs, determined that I was going to be an astronaut or oceanographer,” she said, but eventually, “acknowledged the fact that I was taking classes that were leading me in this direction.”
“After UW, I worked for a year in before-after school programs in Seattle, and in Santa Cruz, I did similar work until I began working as a substitute teacher there… and I fell in love with working with middle school-aged kids.
“I earned a teaching credential with an emphasis in bilingual education from California State University at Monterey Bay and immediately got a job at the middle school where I did a majority of my substitute teaching — sixth grade language arts, literature and social studies and eighth grade English.”
How many students do you see in a day?
“I currently have 27 eighth grade AVID students, plus four periods of eighth grade U.S. History, about 138-ish students, so about 165 kids, but some of my AVID kids are in my history classes.”
What do you like about teaching middle school?
“What isn’t there to love, not just like? My first principal learned from her mentor principal that, ‘We teach middle school because we are.’ What a great statement, and it’s so true.
“I think my position in my own family as the baby sister really shaped me as an educator. I have such vivid memories of being this age, which is how I fell in love with teaching middle school as a substitute teacher. I think more than anything, I have inadvertently created a style of teaching (a firm, but loving, rapport with my students ) that has earned their trust. This, in turn, makes teaching the subjects I teach enjoyable, memorable and bearable for me and (most of) my students.”
What do your students struggle with the most?
“Completing work at home is the first thing that comes to mind. Now that I’m teaching AVID, I’m realizing how hard it is for students to break years of bad habits, such as poor organization, poor studying, not advocating for themselves, poor follow-through, and really just understanding themselves as students and their role as a student.
“It has been a new and welcome challenge to work with my AVID students who are not at all a one-size-fits-all group. Teaching this class is a reminder for me, and should be a reminder for all teachers, that we have kids in our classes who appear fine, but have more baggage than we might imagine.”
How would you describe an educator of the year — what qualities would they have?
“This sounds like a singles ad: flexible, adventurous, sense of humor, firm, loving, approachable, leader, and a life-long-learner.”
What have you learned from your students?
“I don’t know where to start. It’s like being a parent— I’ve learned to be selfless, that the work is always there and that it’s never done, how to laugh at myself and show that I’m human, and to prove that I will not always know the answers but I can model and encourage how to find them rather than being satisfied with not knowing. “
