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10/02/2024 08:30 AMWhether at Joseph Melillo Middle School (JMMS) or at a summer camp, East Haven native Stephen Martindale recognizes that there is ultimately no single bad day when it comes to working with East Haven youth. He sees that in his current role as a building sub at the middle school and will continue to see that when he becomes a teacher himself in the near future.
Before coming to JMMS, Stephen worked for a nonprofit organization, but he realized one day that a career involving working with kids was something he wanted to pursue. After going through a paraprofessional role, he decided, “This teaching thing is definitely for me.” Luckily for Stephen, as a teacher, one could impact at least one student, and as a result, that ultimately promises truly no bad days in that role.
“What makes teaching so enjoyable is that no matter how hard the day is, there’s at least going to be one kid that makes you laugh, and that’s what keeps you going,” he says.
Plus, working at JMMS sees Stephen becoming another member of his family supporting education at the school.
“My mom is a teacher at the high school, but she spent nearly 20 years at the middle school, so it was pretty cool to go back there and continue what she was doing,” he says.
On an average day, Stephen is the “designated personnel filling in wherever,” he says.
“I could be four different people throughout the day covering different classes. If [a teacher] has a meeting, I hop in quick [and] cover their class. Three teachers out, I got to fill in on those schedules. Some days, I’m just floating around helping where I’m needed, whether that’s bathroom duty, watching lunches, whatever it may be.”
Stephen’s support for the teaching staff and their students is not limited to filling in whenever needed and ensuring that lessons go according to plan. He is also of great help to staff on the technological side of teaching, possessing much literacy in that skill set.
He says that when teachers who have been at JMMS for up to 30 years acquire new technology for their classrooms, they may not be immediately adaptable to them. That’s where Stephen’s help comes in, showing them how to connect iPads teachers have to TVs in classrooms, making sure “that the iPad doesn’t lock throughout the day, and tiny things that they weren’t taught but would help them do their job exponentially,” he explains.
“I feel responsible to help them ease into that.”
His technology capabilities go well back to his time as a student at JMMS, where he spent time building computers, and then progressed to when he was a computer science major in higher education.
Now wanting to become a teacher, Stephen is pursuing his Master’s in elementary education. He has his sights set on becoming a teacher at the upper elementary level and is strongly considering being a social studies teacher at the fifth- or sixth-grade levels. He mentions history and the study of Greco-Roman mythology as significant topics of interest, but
Stephen acknowledges, “I don’t expect anyone to really care about that going forward.” What matters more, he says, are the skills students will build in their studies that are applicable in nearly every aspect of their lives going forward.
“The truth is I don’t really care if you memorize the dates that you know a war started or that a treaty was signed, but more so that you have the ability to research something, find your own facts and answers, and then properly articulate your thoughts on that because that’s what we do in the real world about everything,” he says.
Stephen’s support and work with East Haven youth extends outside the classroom. This past summer, he was the director of the YMCA summer camp that took place at the former Hays School.
“What I really like to claim as something special about our camp is that kids love coming there for the people that are there. It’s a super small campus - we don’t have a pool, or we don’t have a crazy hiking trail - but I do think that we have some of the best people and some of the best kids that really just enjoy being around each other and making memories.”
Stephen was also one of the founders of the Teen Center at the Hays School, the epicenter of East Haven Youth Services.
“This is for our middle school kids on every other Friday night to come and just do something fun and get out of the house and stay out of trouble,” he says. “We’re really trying to be a center to support our kids at what I call a really difficult age…when you’re 13, it’s a really hard time, so we’re just trying to give some sort of area for them to be themselves and to get through.”