By Ysrael Hernandez
This is my first year at ASUPD, and I was very worried about what the school was going to be like. When my LSC and I went through the different electives for high school, I noticed Game Design as one of the classes. I figured out a way to write a story and make a game. When I first entered Game Design, the teacher, Mr. Jaeger, was different from the teachers at my old school. After four months in the school, I have learned so much in Game Design, and I want to thank Mr. Jaeger. Not only has this been interesting and fun, but it has also been interactive and different from other schoolwork.
When I asked Mr. Jaeger about what his teaching philosophy is, he said, “My philosophy here is whatever I can do to show my student I really care and I want to help them become lifelong learners,” because, he said, people are always learning, and he wants his students to be caring intellectuals. I asked if there were any special or memorable teaching moments, and there were two he wanted to share. When he was teaching in elementary school, he said he wanted his class to be very interactive, so he created a Jaeger-Ville. Kids would apply for jobs every month, and each kid would get their own ‘salary,’ which was poker chips with a J drawn on them. Once you saved up enough, you could buy something from the store during recess. Anyway, Mr. Jaeger said that his students would give poker chips to students in other classrooms, and there would be random students trying to buy stuff or trying to make counterfeit J poker chips. Mr. Jaeger states, “…everything went down in flames of corruption.”
If you’ve ever been in Mr. Jaeger’s class, you’ve probably noticed a puppet in the background on a shelf. This is an important fact for the next story. This takes place when he was teaching social studies in a brick-and-mortar classroom. He had a puppet of Bob La Follette, a Wisconsin politician, hanging from the ceiling. Everyone thought the puppet was a little creepy. Well, the school Mr. Jaeger was teaching at was so large it had its own police department called School Safety. One winter break, when Mr. Jaeger left, the puppet was still hanging from the ceiling, but when he got back, the puppet was on his chair. Eventually, he found out that at one point during winter break, some of the puppet’s strings broke, and when it fell, it set off the alarm. The School Safety team showed up with their guns and dogs, thinking they would find an intruder, but instead, they found a puppet on the floor. Mr. Jaeger said he wonders what the security guards thought when they saw the puppet on the floor.
My last question for him was if he had any advice for students. He said that he has a quote, “The greatest teacher, failure is.” – Yoda, The Last Jedi. “You’re going to make mistakes,” he said, “and you grow. From those mistakes, you learn what works and what’s not working. So, just give yourself some grace to make some mistakes in your life, and don’t be so hard on yourself. Do your studies, whatever it is you are trying to accomplish. Be a good, caring person.”
Mr. Jaeger teaches social studies, game design, and art history club. He has been teaching for 25 years and has made positive impacts on my school career.
– Ysrael Hernandez.
