After ten years of teaching here at the Woodlands High School, English teacher Ms. Hutchins will now be Mrs. Turner.
“Next year, I will officially be just Mrs. Turner,” she said.
Since she got married this spring, Mrs. Turner has had to label all of her things “Ms. Hutchins/Mrs. Turner” to ease herself into the name change. Thankfully, since Mrs. Turner only taught seniors this year, the transition to next year shouldn’t be too difficult.
Turner has been teaching for 14 years, first at New Waverly high school, and then here. Growing up in the Houston area, she went to Sam Houston State University, where she got a BA and MA in English Literature with a minor in Secondary Education. She has also been the sponsor for the National English Honors Society at The Woodlands for the past four years.
“It’s easier now to watch students graduate, but [when I first started teaching] it was emotional,” she said.
For Turner, teaching English always seemed the logical path. Although he didn’t end up a teacher, her father studied to be one, and her sister was one too.
“There wasn’t an expectation for me to be a teacher, but it’s just what we do,” she said.
Although her family set the precedent for teaching, she found the inspiration to specifically teach English during her own high school experience. She greatly enjoyed taking her Dual Credit English classes and her teacher encouraged her to study English in college.
“It was always a dream of mine [to teach DC] since I loved the classes,” she said.
Turner has taught DC English for eight years now. For her, the best part of teaching the course is sharing her love for literature with her students.
“I love the content and I love seeing the students get something out of it and have those ah-ha moments,” she said.
Although she enjoys almost all of the content she teaches, her favorite book to teach is the Middle English chivalric romance “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.”
“I love medieval literature,” she said.
She found her love for medieval literature in grad school, where she had a professor whose enthusiasm inspired her own. However, in high school, she went through a bit of a “Jane Austen phase” and read all of the 19th century writer’s work.
While her name has changed, her passion for English Literature remains the same.
“All literature is commentary on the human experience, so the more you read, the better prepared as a human you will be, from ancient literature to the present” she said.
