On Nov. 23, the class of 2022 participated in Senior Takeover Day, a tradition dating back to the earliest days of the Hill, where seniors choose their favorite teachers and “takeover” their classes for a day.

Participating seniors create their own lesson plan, dress in character and teach a full load of the selected teacher’s classes. Echoing the hardships of the real classroom, seniors experience the reality of lesson planning and classroom management. They also experience the joy and excitement of teaching a different curriculum to students and interacting with them.

Senior Alex Dean thought that his time taking over choir teacher Rachel Snyder’s class was fun, but it was a challenge to make sure all the kids were having fun and enjoying themselves. 

“Making sure that the students were having a good time and having fun [was] one of the most challenging parts of taking over my class,” Dean said. 

Taking the chance to become a teacher for a day allows seniors to see if they could fit the role of being a teacher. For students, like senior Katie Bowles, who might want to teach in the future, this is a good way to test those skills and try them out.

“It was a really fun experience,” Bowles said. “If I were to enter a teaching position or a teaching career it would be a really good first base.”

According to senior Mia Oliver, creating lesson plans is something some of the seniors saw not only as challenging but also as fun to come. 

“For art I made a big piece of The Kiss, which is a famous art piece and then everybody got a square without knowing what it is and got to color it however they wanted, we put it together and it was this crazy, colorful kiss portrait,” Olivier said. 

While it’s fun to interact with the students and see how they work in a class environment, participating seniors were able to see everything from a teacher’s point of view. Some, like senior Jailyn Mabe, realized that a teacher’s job is not as simple as it sometimes appears. 

“I think it’s difficult since they have to create lesson plans, activities and try to keep the kids focused,” Mabe said.