Tenth and 12th grade English teacher Sheggai Tamerat enjoys finding ways to step “out of predictability” into new spaces, expand what she teaches beyond the classroom and travel the world. She has taught different levels of English for 19 years, toured with students across Asia and Europe and desires a balanced life.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What are some of your first impressions of BHS?
The thing that is the most visible to me is this concept of freedom and responsibility. That was the first thing I was told when I got here: “You’ll notice that when you come to Brookline, students have a lot of freedom.” I’ve never experienced that before and in all honesty I was wondering what that would all look like day-to-day. I’ve never taught in a situation that attempted to lean into student responsibility, student freedom and student choice. So whereas it made me nervous initially, seeing it in action has been such a positive spin on how I think of the possibilities of education.
What were the highlights of your summer?
I did a lot of traveling. I’d say the highlight though is I went to Cartagena in Colombia. I went with a group of educators, mostly professors, but while we were there we were exploring the diaspora at large. We had important conversations, specifically that related to secondary education; how we’re teaching students across the globe about Black issues. So that was exciting because I got to sit and have incredible conversations but I also got to contextualize a lot of the things I had been teaching and learning.
What do you like to do outside of work?
I would say that in my years prior, one of things that I love to do is take students abroad. That’s always been something that I’ve enjoyed doing. I’ve taken students all over: we’ve gone to Mongolia, to China, to all across Europe. I love to open up the classroom; that’s always been important. We study this here in our course, and we try to open it up, that’s my passion. I love the field trips, I love experiential learning, I love traveling. Whatever I can do in order to maximize impact, I will always do so students don’t see me as standing in front of them for a couple hours every week and that’s it. I want to leave a more lasting impression on them as it relates to their own development and education.
What are some hopes you have for your students this year?
We need to shift our language so we’re not always like, “Okay this is how they do it, this is what they believe in this part of the world and these are the values.” Because at the end of the day,
I think so many of us want to be loved, we want to be understood, we all wake up everyday and try to, hopefully, do what is right. So the hope is to see the humanity that we all share and to answer your question now: what are my hopes for my students? [To] recognize that they are at a period in their life in which they can learn, they can also make a lot of mistakes and have freedom to make some mistakes. But in those mistakes, they seize opportunities to grow from them as they move forward.
What is a book that brings you joy?
I’m going to go, one: “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, and then, two, is the traditional “[The] Alchemist”. You read that once and then you just, you realign. It gets me back. “The Alchemist” for that purpose of the joy of writing. The joy of a good love story would be “Their Eyes Were Watching God”. You can read “The Alchemist” a thousand times, every time through a different lens because you’re in a different space or you might need to hear a message. It’s light, it’s fast, it brings me joy, but it also brings me peace. I try to be very well-balanced. I just need the balance of life and the older I’ve gotten the more important that has gotten. Where do I find joy? Where do I find peace? I think that we should try hard to surround ourselves with people and environments that make you feel good and that you have a positive response to.
