Milton Alumni and Social Studies Teacher Ms. Stacey Behnert will retire at the end of the school year.
Ms. Behnert graduated from Milton in 1984, attending Montandon Elementary School, Milton Intermediate School on Turbot Avenue, Milton Junior High and Milton High School.
Ms. Behnert attended Lebanon Valley College for two years, first majoring in biology but later changed to history education. She then transferred to Bloomsburg and graduated in 1989, majoring in social studies.
She has been teaching for 35 years, beginning in 1989. She began her career as a long-term sub in the middle school from 1989-1993 and then began teaching history. She eventually moved to the high school, where she has been teaching history, psychology and sociology.
“When I first started teaching, we did everything by hand. There were no computers, there was no internet. If we graded, we graded everything by hand,” Ms. Behnert said. “You had to figure out the projector. We thought we were really lucky because we got film strips that had cassette tapes that went with them. And we thought that was pretty spiffy.”
“When I was here as a student, I always felt we had really good relationships with our coaches and everybody just always seemed very friendly and helpful and willing to help you,” she said.
“I think that we are still that way today. I think we have a good faculty and think the faculty is willing to, for the most part, go out of their way to help students,” she added.
Ms. Behnert said then when she started teaching at the Milton Middle School, it was a high energy environment, but when she transferred to the high school, the environment was slow and calm. She added that she brought hands-on teaching style with her from middle school to high school.
“But somewhere along the line, education got towards the test and teaching the test. We had a certain set of stuff to get through, which made it very difficult to continue,” she added.
Ms. Behnert said there have been difficult times in her career
“I hit year number seven and I was like, I don’t think I’m going to do this anymore. There were some difficulties between some of the faculty and the administration and lots of people were unhappy,” she added.
“There are some classes that you like a lot. There are some classes maybe a little less,” Ms. Behnert explained. “I’ve had a couple of classes where I’ve had a couple of kids in there that were just nasty and that made it not fun to teach that class.”
Ms. Behnert added that students are not motivated to learn new information and have a lack of respect and have more interest in their cell phone.
“But with any kind of job, you have time where you feel really good about it and then times you don’t. Education is no different,” she added.
Director of Secondary Education Adrew Rantz has known Ms. Behnert for 27 years. He said she taught him when he was 14 years old and now works alongside with her.
“She is what I consider ‘old school’ in her approach to education, and I respect it 100 percent. She cares for her students, she cares for their learning, but she holds everyone accountable and doesn’t allow for short cuts. That aspect will be greatly missed. She’s an MASD legend!” Mr. Rantz said.
He added that his favorite memory of Ms. Behnert is when she showed an uncanny ability to break up a fight in the hallway.
Her favorite teaching memory is when her students tell her that she has made a difference to them and have learned a lot from her.
She also said that education and students have changed and will continue to change through the years.
“I really think that public education is changing, and it will be a huge, big, different thing in a very short time,” she added.
Ms. Behnert said that AI will play a big role in students’ lives in the next few years and that the jobs school is preparing kids for will not exist due to AI.
