Name: Melissa Stull ’94
Position: Third-grade teacher
Location: Chase Elementary School, Chicago
Major: Interdepartmental with a social studies emphasis

Melissa Stull’s journey to teach has followed a circuitous route since she left Wittenberg in 1994. Her story is one of contrasts, struggles, personal growth and commitment.

Following graduation, Melissa first served as a substitute teacher and tutor at an Ohio high school before joining the Peace Corps. For two years, on the beach-studded island of Kosrae in the Federated States of Micronesia, she taught eighth-grade English and worked with other teachers. The pace of daily life was slow for Melissa’s multi-tasking personality, but she soon learned to fill her time doing one task at a time, disciplining herself to savor each.

Upon her return to the United States, Melissa decided to try another avenue in her quest to work with young people. She became a social worker, and eventually a teacher, at a home for immigrant children in Chicago. After six months, she realized how much she missed the classroom and found a position at a school near her Chicago home teaching sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade students. Only later did she discover that several of her students only spoke Spanish, and many had special needs —neither of which she was prepared to address.

The following year a position opened in third grade at the school. Because there was a teacher shortage that year, Melissa was hired on the condition that she begin working on her elementary certification. Now certified, Melissa is still teaching third-graders at Chase Elementary, an inner-city school in Chicago where 95 percent of the student population is Hispanic, with the majority of students being English dominant. The school is located in an impoverished Hispanic neighborhood that is being affected by gentrification.

Several of Melissa’s students’ families have had to move in with relatives in the school’s neighborhood, as rent prices have risen sharply. Two students live in shelters. Seventy-five percent are from single-parent households. About half of her students’ parents work outside of the home, and the school’s mobility rate of 25 percent has affected her class size, which has ranged from 21 to 28 students. Her students’ home lives also greatly affect their performance in the classroom, and Melissa finds herself often stepping into a parental role.

“ The lessons are countless. Patience. What I can and cannot reasonably do. Boundaries. Choosing my battles wisely. Tenacity. And the most unanticipated of all, the importance of silence,” Melissa explains.

“ Growing up in a mid-sized city, I took for granted that I could find quiet and solitude when I wanted it. The same does not apply in the big city. So few of my students experience quiet moments in their home lives that I have made 15 minutes of silence a daily ritual in my classroom. Students are free to sit, read, write, draw, think. Despite the noise from the busy street below, sometimes we hear birds chirping.”

Melissa’s students bring with them many sad stories, and Melissa says that it is easy to become overwhelmed. “There have been many crazy days and circumstances as well, but I accepted these early on as part of the job,” she adds. The biggest challenge, Melissa explains, has been trying to be the person that she wants to be in the classroom.

“ Often I struggle with how to remain true to myself while remaining in charge of 25 young people who have greater needs than education. I have been, done, and said things that I never would have imagined myself doing 10 years ago.
“ After my first year of teaching in Chicago, I really thought that would be it. I did not like myself as a teacher or as the person I had become. Fortunately, I found a better match by teaching third-graders. But it remains a struggle — to be myself and the teacher I want to be, and to maintain control of a classroom of young people who have lived more life than I have.”

Such struggles have affected Melissa, but she doesn’t want to leave teaching.
“ Although I am already tired and have thought about trying something else, I am not sure I can leave teaching. For all of its headaches and heartaches, I cannot envision myself in another role.”