1. Before Bellevue East, did you have any teaching experience? If so, where?

Nathan Frankman, Geometry instructor, “This is my first year full-time teaching. I student taught last year at East Middle School in Sioux City, Iowa.”

Joshua Schiefelbein, Personal Finance instructor, “I am a first year teacher so Bellevue East is my only experience.”

Rae Fahrlander, German 2 instructor, “Yes, I’ve taught for four years at Columbus,”

2. How do you find Bellevue East so far?

Frankman, “Bellevue East has been awesome. All the administration and staff have been so helpful with everything. Our math department especially has been so welcoming and willing to help me with anything! Big shout out to Mr. Lenz for everything he does for me!”

Schiefelbein, “Bellevue East is great! I love how helping the Bellevue East Team is. No matter what your question is you will always find someone willing to help.”

Fahrlander, “I find it a larger school, I find some things that are very different in how things are run, or how big the department is, because it’s larger here than what I had previously. But overall a lot of the things are the same.”

3. Compared to what you were expecting, how does BE measure up?

Frankman, “I was not sure what to expect. I went to school in Papillion growing up and always knew about Bellevue but did not have any expectations. All the students are awesome and I enjoy being able to teach here! I am also realizing that the color purple really does not look that bad!”

Schiefelbein, “Because of COVID I was expecting students to not want to be in class and wanting to leave school. My experience so far has been the opposite! I have had students so glad to see their classmates and wanting to do classwork while respecting the COVID protocols.”

Fahrlander, “It’s kind of hard to say what I was expecting with COVID going on. I think it does, there is a lot of, especially with staff, there’s a lot of support and a lot of friendliness there. And as far as students, I think it took a while to kind of warm up to having a new teacher for the program, but it’s also been going very good.”

4. Are there any particular student encounters that you would like to share, amusing or otherwise? 

Frankman, “I really enjoy my advisory. I get to see them everyday and we have some inside jokes that make that class an awesome time! I also enjoyed watching some of my students compete in their sports and seeing them as more than just my geometry students! I like seeing them represent our school!”

Schiefelbein, “All of my students have been great. My Career Development students still try to convince me that we should just watch movies all day and sleep but it hasn’t worked yet!”

Fahrlander, N/A

5. How has COVID-19 affected your teaching for this year?

Frankman, “COVID has made it difficult especially in trying to keep students interacting with each other in class. I wish I could implement more collaboration in my room, but it is difficult because of COVID. I do enjoy using the iPads and I think my students do as well. I find it very easy for them to submit assignments and it saves a bunch of paper! I also love being able to review with some awesome games or websites like Kahoot and Quizziz live.”

Schiefelbein, “I love having group projects but they have been somewhat limited because of social distancing.”

Fahrlander, “It’s a little bit of a struggle, I mean we do the best that we can, but it is sad when, especially with a language, if you can’t see if people are practicing pronunciation, if they can’t see my mouth, sometimes for how to form words. And it’s also sad because a lot of times it’s a very engaging class where you get up and you work with each other, and practice dialogues or just partner work, and you can’t do that as much.”

6. Anything extra you feel like sharing?

Frankman, “I have really enjoyed my time here and I look forward to getting to know more students as I continue to teach! I am excited to see all of our students in their sports, activities, and other extracurricular activities once we are able to attend those! Go Chieftains!”

Schiefelbein, N/A 

Fahrlander, “I think we’re doing a pretty good job with everything with COVID, and I think, just in general. I think all of the students have done a really good job.”