Panther Press: Do you like your job, why or why not?
Lisa Belly: I do. Being a teacher was not my first choice [because] I wanted to do something with computers like animation, but I couldn’t draw. I like history and I like helping people and I feel like this is a perfect age to teach. Kids around this age are very impressionable.
And I want to make a difference.
Panther Press: What was one of your biggest accomplishments?
Ms. Belly: Getting Teacher of the Year is probably one of my highest accomplishments that a teacher would want to get, so that is my biggest accomplishment.
Press: Why did you choose history?
Ms. Belly: A lot of people think that history is boring, but I like it because it is not just about facts and memorization and dates. It’s about looking at our past and looking at how got to the present and where we are going into the future.
Press: How did you and Mr. Herre get put in the same classroom?
Ms. Belly: It is just Mrs. Cilento who just wants to make a match usually with the same content so Mr. Here and I both teach social studies. Having us paired together makes the class better if we have that background knowledge.
Panther Press: Do you like working with Mr. Herre?
Ms. Belly: It is really good we have a good dynamic. Mr. Herre and I have taught together before and we do a good collaboration. We are very good with bouncing off one another. You know we are very good with dividing up the work and you know it’s kind of a tag team.
Panther Press: Did you like teaching 6th-grade history?
Ms. Belly: I like to teach 6th grade history because 6th grade is just coming out of elementary school it is a big transition in the beginning. I taught eighth grade world history for a long time and I loved it until a few years ago. I got switched to sixth grade and at first, I was not sure about it. I was like this is boring, but then I realized it was so much more interesting than I thought. I feel like the sixth graders could get into it, too.
Press: Is history a good subject? Why or why not?
Ms. Belly: It is a good subject for me. That is what I went to college for. I was always interested in history. I couldn’t be a math teacher, [so] history was it for me.
Press: Is history important for you?
Ms. Belly: It is important for me and it stems from a teacher I had in high school. It goes to show that history is a picture of our past and things that we learn from our past so we don’t repeat those things in the future.
Panther Press: What was your job before history?
Ms. Belly: Before being a history teacher I worked at a grocery store called A&P but they went out of business even when I started teaching here.
Panther Press: What was it like in Italy seeing the Leaning Tower of Pisa?
Ms. Belly: Italy was fun. I loved it it was only a really cloudy day and when you go you can actually see it tilting that way. And every year it moves and you can see it tilting a little bit more. It is great it was a nice drive up the countryside and I did like posing for that picture.
Panther Press: How did you get hired?
Ms. Belly: I am a product of Woodbridge Township. I went to Fords Middle School and I went to Woodbridge High School. I started out as a long-term sub so for a teacher here. That’s how I kind of started it off and then when he retired as a teacher [I took over].
Panther Press: What was it like teaching for 16 years?
Ms. Belly: It was interesting because school today is different than what it was sixteen years ago. We didn’t have Chromebooks, laptops, or iPads then. We didn’t have them even five years, ten years ago. So it is interesting to see how the kids in sixth grade, seventh grade, and eighth grade and then off to high school, some in college — it’s fun to see that timeline of growth seeing my former kids grow up. But it’s also interesting to see how sixth graders change throughout those years. The sixth graders now are probably more mature than the sixth graders from when I started teaching.
Press: How was it teaching 8th graders?
Ms. Belly: I feel like with eighth graders, since they have two extra years than sixth graders, we have more open and more in-depth discussions. I feel that [with 6th graders] attention can be a little short and having a discussion for half an hour or so, people are going to zone out. But eighth graders also kind of feel like they’re in eighth grade and being the oldest in the school, so they can be more of a discipline problem at times.
Press: do you like working with Mr. Herre?
Ms. Belly: I do like working with Mr. Herre. He is another experienced teacher. We were friends in high school so I do like working with him. He is very laid back and he is very good when I forget something. He’s very good with jumping in and covering me like that so we have a really good relationship. It’s not like like you work with somebody that you don’t want to.
Panther Press: Do you like to work in a middle school?
Ms. Belly: Elementary school, I don’t think I could handle because they are too young. In high school, 9,10, and 11 grade you are already the person you think you want to be. I feel like in middle school this is the transitional age right where kids can go one way or another, on a good path or a bad path. I feel like this is a good age to impact kids. This is where a lot of things are happening in their life, friendships, relationship and school and other things come up like drugs and alcohol but this is the age where it shows up to be impactful not only teach them but also lead them on a good path.
Press why don’t you work at a different middle school?
Ms. Belly: I know a lot of people who work in Woodbridge Township, so I was really for Woodbridge Township. This is where the opening was, so this is where I went.
