Mr. Weaver may be new to PDS, but he is no stranger to the Great Road. He spent the past six years teaching English at Princeton Academy of the Sacred Heart. He became interested in PDS after some of his former colleagues joined the Panther community.
In fact, as Mr. Weaver went through the job interviewing process, he already saw familiar faces in the hallway, from former colleagues to past students and even parents. Having known and been welcomed by PDS students whom he had taught at other schools gave Mr. Weaver an early sense of belonging that carried through into his first weeks at PDS.
Mr. Weaver’s journey in English began in his elementary school years, being around and conversing with his grandfather who had shelves of books of speculative fiction about the possible end of the world. As a young child, Mr. Weaver was impressed by what he saw, and borrowed some of those books, even though he knew their contents were over his head at the time. Eventually he developed a fascination with literature and their impact on people’s sense of place, being and belonging.
Mr. Weaver values the connections and personhood in English, therefore selecting Belonging & Humanity and Place & Identity as the themes of his junior-senior electives. Those classes, along with two sections of freshman English, round out Mr. Weaver’s first semester at PDS. Other than teaching his core texts, Mr. Weaver also enjoys speculative fiction where the author takes an idea and tests it, similar to science fiction. Mr. Weaver described one way that speculative fiction can be considered: “So let’s say we’ve figured out a way to look into an alternate timeline and see what our lives would be like if we had made a different decision. Then the author just runs with that thought and thinks about how it might affect us.”
The sort of thought-provoking discussions that these courses and types of literature bring aligns well with Mr. Weaver’s impression of PDS students, whom he describes as “hardworking and interested in diving into the text and having good discussions.” It also provides students insights behind the text itself, according to Mr. Weaver, giving students the opportunity to think about the nature of the world we live in, how we engage with that world, and what drives the kind of choices we make.
For Mr. Weaver, English classes build on other academic subjects by giving a person a reason to survive as well as teaching a person how to survive in life. “Studying literature and getting in touch with your own thoughts through writing and understanding yourself through writing is a lot of what makes life meaningful,” says Mr. Weaver.
He hopes that, regardless of whether a student enjoys the material discussed in his class, they will be intrigued enough to continue reading and writing outside of the classroom in genres that capture their own imaginations. As Mr. Weaver says, “So I’m hoping that even if they don’t like most of the books that I’m putting in front of them during the year, it’s inspiring them to pick up something else and read. For the writing piece of study, it gives students reasons to write outside of the classroom for the sake of personal reflection and communications.”
Welcome, Mr. Weaver!
