Newark High School math teacher, Shaneria Robinson has always loved math. From a young age, she has found math difficult, but once she put in the work and improved, she found math to be really fun. Teaching her friends was where she found her love for teaching.
“Well, I initially just always loved math.” Robinson said, “I never knew I was going to teach until I got to high school and I realized that I liked kind of helping my friends with math. I still found math challenging, but I was willing to put in the work. I cared enough to try really really hard, and once I figured it out and started teaching my friends, I realized ‘Okay this is kind of cool, you know, teach my friends how to do math.’ So I think I thought maybe I would major in mathematics and teach it to high school students.”
Growing up in Connecticut, Robinson wanted to go to an HBCU. Delaware’s HBCU, Delaware State, was the closest one to where she grew up in Connecticut. From there it was only a short trip to Newark High.
“I went to college at Delaware State University. I grew up in Connecticut, [and] went to high school in Connecticut. But I wanted to go to an HBCU, and Delaware had the closest HBCU so I chose Delaware’s to come to.”
Robinson has always wanted to go to work somewhere in the area as she grew up in Connecticut. However, during the tour, she decided that Delaware state is the place she wanted to go, even though her home state, Connecticut, is far away.
“So Connecticut is actually like a 4 hour drive, so it was crazy to always drive back and forth. But the other HBCUs are a little further so I know there’s, you know, some in Baltimore, Virginia, Maryland which would have made my drive like 7 hours, so I was like ‘Okay, Delaware’s small,’ and I did a DSU tour… Once I did the tour, I knew that I really wanted to go there and that’s why I chose Delaware State.”
The best part of Robinsons day is her students. Welcoming them into her classroom, her students never fail to lift her mood.
“My students are so funny. That’s the one thing. I think they’re so funny, they make my day and I would much rather spend everyday with some funny kids than grumpy adults. Other than that, I love math and I think it’s cool to come to school everyday and do [math]… that I love so much.”
Ms.Robinson is a fairly new teacher at Newark High School. She’s already fitting and is excited to complete a full year this fall.
“So this is my first year, this would be my first full complete year. So I started in January last spring semester, and so the completion of this fall semester would be an entire year.”
Outside of teaching math and helping students, Robinson loves having days off with her cat. She likes to play games and relax or have friends over.
“I am a homebody. I love watching movies, I have a cat so I hang out with my cat, playing games. I’ll have a girls night, my friends come over, we play games and watch movies and listen to music so really, I just love being at home because it’s relaxing.”
Robinson is also a part of the national guard whilst being a math teacher. She was part of the armed services before teaching and still commits to serving while teaching at Newark.
“I like it, I’m in the national guard. I originally joined the national guard so that they could pay for college for me. So I joined the national guard for them to pay for college and I’m still in it because I like it. I only have to do one weekend a month which is two days. And two weeks in the summer.”
“It’s a little weird because I will teach Monday through Friday and then one weekend of the month – Saturday and Sunday – I’ll have to work. It’s kind of like a full seven days of working but you know my college education was free, and I get to travel for free. “I’m going to Trinidad in April [and that is] free, paid for by the U.S government… it has its perks for sure.”
Robinson never tried to influence her friends to join teaching.
“I’m not going to lie, I have not tried to influence my friends to teach. My friends are very impatient, I don’t think they have the patience to deal with high school students. I don’t know, I’ve been there. I was that crazy student talking back, not being quiet, doing things that I probably shouldn’t have… so I have empathy for you guys cause I get it. I’ve been there and I’ve done that and I’ve also graduated, so therefore [I know] it could be done, it can be done.”
Growing up in Connecticut, She’s always been in a big crowd. Having 4,000 kids in one single high school does show different behaviors within other people. Newark is much smaller, but she can still see how pressure at school might affect the students a little more than what they think.
“So where I went to high school. It was the only high school in the city. [It was] a huge high school. With like 4,000 kids in the high school, every single kid in the city went to the same high school. It was just a huge school [and it is so] easy to get in with the wrong crowd. Not even the wrong crowd, but just you know people want to be liked, people want to be funny, people want to be popular, so I can see how peer pressure plays a role at such a large scale when you are in a classroom with thirty kids.”
Ms. Robinson realizes how she was able to avoid peer pressuer. “I still had a good grasp on [the fact that I] need to graduate. So yeah, I was being funny, but at the end of the day, I knew I needed to pass all my classes and I was able to do that… In my first semester in college I failed every class except for math. I think it was the fact that I had too much freedom” “You know in college there’s nobody. Your mom’s not waking you up to go to school. Your teachers don’t care if you take notes. They don’t care if you pay attention. They don’t even care if you show up. So it’s all up to you to be in control of your education.”
Robinson believes her experience has shaped her philosophy on teaching.”I think the earlier students take accountability of themselves and their own grade and realize ‘hey this is up to me, it’s not up to my teacher if I pass, it’s up to me if I pass’, I think they will do well leaving high school and going to college cause thats what its all about.”
