From Chalkboards to AI: A Teacher’s 65-Year Journey

On her very first day of student teaching at Linden Avenue Middle School in Red Hook, N.Y., Martha Strever pushed, pulled and pounded on the school's door, which was locked. No one came. Where was everybody? It was, after all, the first day of school.

It turned out everybody was exactly where they were supposed to be: inside, having entered through the school's front entrance. Strever had been knocking on a side door. Flustered but undeterred, she not only found her way inside, she also found her life's calling.

Strever's sentences are punctuated with laughs when she recounts the story to Linden Avenue Principal Stacie Fenn-Smith who is one of her former students. So is Fenn-Smith's daughter.

This fall, when the career-long member of the Red Hook Faculty Association walks through the correct door once again, she will be marking her 65th year of teaching at Linden Avenue. She has no plans to retire. After more than six decades, there are still kids to teach and innovations to master.

Strever started teaching math and science-which required her to wheel around her own cart of Bunsen burners-in 1960. Since then, she has served as the first woman ever to chair a department at Linden Avenue, walked her students through the 1969 moon landing, learned to use everything from early shoebox-sized calculators to the latest TI-Nspire CX II graphing calculator, mastered the internet, taught through numerous iterations of state standards, established an accelerated algebra class, and pivoted to her current specialty: co-teaching a multigrade-level special education math class.

There is no question about what keeps Strever in the classroom far past the time when others are drawing their well-deserved pensions. "I just love the children," she says. "Right from the beginning, I loved seeing them respond and seeing their accomplishments."

It is also clear that Strever never could have done anything else. Teaching is her life's purpose, driven by a profound desire to support the students who need it the most. And it is a purpose she found early-at age 7.

"My love for teaching started in the second grade. My parents had a full-length mirror as part of their bedroom set, and I would stand in front of it and pretend I was teaching a class. My mother was a nurse; no one ever told me that I needed to be a teacher. I just never wanted to be anything else."

From the calculators to the moon landing to AI

On that first day in 1960, Strever walked into a classroom equipped with a blackboard and plenty of chalk. It was everything she needed. To teach fractions, she sketched out pizza pies, divided them up into sections, and had the children add toppings: maybe half with pepperoni, one-quarter with mushrooms, one-eighth with sausage and one-eighth with cheese-a technique she says still works beautifully today.

A few years in, calculators showed up, so big that they required extra tables in the back of the classroom, and outlets. The sizable machines had to be plugged into the wall.

When it came to the moon landing, Strever said she resorted to newspaper clippings and a model rocket.

"We didn't have provisions in the classroom back in the early years; I don't think we even had any filmstrips we could use," she says. "I would bring articles in, and I even bought model rockets so that I could show them how things were done."

It would have been easy for her to join the protests against calculators, shun all the advancements and stick to chalk. But not only did she embrace new technology-there is now a set of Macs for every student in her classroom-she consistently led her school and her district through its implementation.

"When computers first became available, I brought them in; that was the first thing I did for the district [as department chair]," she says. And through another laugh, she recalls, "I remember even teaching some of the administrative staff how to use Excel."

She does, however, know when technology is the answer, and when it's not.

"I can't say I won't change this coming year, because things are always changing; but in the past, I would not allow calculators on straightforward adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing because I've found that the students get too dependent on the calculator," she says. "At the end of every period, I do mental math with the kids. I say the problem, and the kids compete to be the first one to say the answer. I end up sounding like an auctioneer."

But in the same breath, she adds, "I'll tell you where the calculator is sensational. Right from Day 1, I have puzzles that make [the students] use scientific calculators. It's making them go much further. In eighth grade, we solve systems of equations, and we would never be able to go that distance if they didn't have the use of the [scientific] calculator."

Unlike using calculators and computers, Strever says she is cautious about using artificial intelligence in the classroom.

"I don't want it to destroy creativity, and I don't want [the students] starting to use that instead of doing their own work. We have to really be thoughtful about how we're going to work with AI."

Decades of change, one constant: Students come first

Spend just a few minutes with Strever and it's clear how intelligent she is. Her decades of insight come from listening, watching, trying new things and applying lessons learned-always with the objective of benefiting her students. She's seen new curricula come and go and learned to make each one work.

"There was a new Measure of Academic Performance test back in the late '60s. It did not last too long. And in the last couple of years, I noticed they've gone back to bringing out what's called lattice multiplication, which was what I was teaching so many years ago."

With as many teaching methodologies as Strever has seen come and go, she doesn't embrace one over the others; instead, she sees them as a toolbox. The method to use, she says, depends on the student in front of you.

In her own words, Strever says, "I will give you an illustration. I had a sixth-grade class that was struggling with fractions. I couldn't get them to see this type of modeling we were using. And I thought, well, I've done this too long, so I started drawing my pizza pie on the board. I would have them tell me what to put on it, and before you know it, we were subtracting fractions.

"One little girl who really struggled raised her hand and said, 'I understand it thoroughly.' The thing that bothers me is, some of the standardized testing will say they have to use that modeling-the method that didn't work for them. And then I worry about the child. Every child learns differently. So why not use an alternative method?"

Now vs. then

At the end of each school year, after everyone else has gone home, you'll find Strever packing up all her teaching tools and her classroom decorations, including the three-foot stuffed bunny that sits on her filing cabinet in the spring, into duffel bags. After 65 years of setting up classrooms, Strever has noticed changes, namely that students today seem more anxious.

Principal Fenn-Smith notes that in the years since the pandemic, the district has focused on building student resiliency, perseverance and confidence. She also points out that this is an area where Strever excels.

"Martha does that very well in her classroom, because she's ever encouraging, and when you talk to students in her class, they'll say that she is 'a serious teacher, but she believes in me, and I feel like I can do it because she thinks I can do it.' And that sort of teacher advocacy is huge and there's an authenticity to it in Martha's approach to teaching that comes through to kids," Fenn-Smith says.

'Do you remember me?'

The impact of Strever's advocacy for her students may be her legacy. She recalled one student who, on the last day of school, handed her a handmade card thanking Strever for giving her confidence and for making her feel like she could be successful in school.

"That's what makes you feel good, when you see things like that," she says.

Fenn-Smith adds, "If you go anywhere with Martha, if you spend any time out in public with her, she is stopped constantly and recognized constantly. Former students want to talk to her and are always asking, 'Do you remember me?'"

After 65 years, it is not unreasonable to estimate that thousands of students have passed through her classroom. Asked if there are particular students she remembers, Strever pauses. She remembers when Fenn-Smith's daughter sat in her class with two broken arms from playing basketball. She remembers the student she taught one-on-one for a year, an experience that eventually led to the creation of the accelerated algebra class. And then she remembers one student who demonstrates why she became a teacher.

"I had been told that this one girl will not talk to you," she recalls. "She just doesn't communicate with the teacher. And so, I gave my little greeting the first day, and then I would get myself so I was close to where she was, and day by day, I was getting a little smile. That made me happy. And then I noticed she wasn't copying down what I would put on the board, and I'd say, 'Put that down just like I have it on your paper.' She began to do that, and then she was beginning to say to me, 'Ms. Strever, is this right?' And I said, 'Yes, you have it right.' Then I'd see a big smile.

"Then one day, she said, 'Ms. Strever, is this right? Could I tell the answer to the class?' That was a turning point in my life. And by the end of the year, she was raising her hand with confidence. She was talking when she left that class."

Some words of advice and what's next

Strever, who is the New York State United Teachers' longest-serving member, has some advice for new teachers.

First, join the union, "you will need that support." Second, "communicate with experienced teachers. Learn from them. Management isn't just about discipline, it's about finding remedies, finding ways to help every child succeed."

To date, Strever has been recognized by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, featured on CBS, and honored on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.

As for what's next, Strever plans to do one thing: Keep teaching.

[Melanie Boyer]