By Fancy Robbins
During the school day, he’s your average student teacher. Most other times, you can find him crowd surfing at his shows.
Mr. David Maginity is a student teacher for Ms. Amanda Craw’s English classes. They met in a unique way.
Craw watched Maginity’s band perform, and after it was over there were people going to meet the band. Craw approached Maginity and said, “Hey, you’re doing your student teaching in the spring, aren’t you?”
Maginity said, “Yeah,” and then Craw broke the news to him that she would be his supervising teacher during the spring semester.
“I about passed out on that stage,” Maginity said.
Maginity is the frontman/vocalist for his band. His favorite hobby outside of school is making music and playing with his band.
“I really started doing my own singing and stuff around fourth grade. Ever since then I realized it was the best way I could communicate with other people,” Maginity said.
His favorite music artists are Radiohead, Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, and Ben Folds.
Maginity wasn’t that good of a student when he was growing up in Greencastle, Ind. He saw school as a list of tasks to do for eight hours, then go home, sleep, and do it again. His perspective altered the experience of his middle/high school years.
Greencastle, an hour west of Indianapolis, is the home of Depauw University. Craw studied at Depauw.
“It’s a weird connection because Greencastle is a very small place, and Depauw’s a very small school,” Craw said
Maginity said he didn’t do any work he had to do and he couldn’t pay attention in class until college, which is when he started actually being a student.
“I believe that it helped my skills in bringing students that had my same problems into high school,” Maginity said. “I hope to be able to change their perspective.”
Being a student teacher is a scary experience, especially on the first days. Maginity expected it to take a month for the kids to warm up to him. In class, he goes by Mr. M.
“Within the first three days everyone just seemed extremely welcoming and I had positive relationships with the kids off the bat, so ever since then it’s been a blast,” Maginity said. “I’ve really enjoyed it.”
Since first coming into Delta, he’s improved tremendously in class. Mr. M is doing better at time management.
“He is great in front of students, he’s very theatrical and I think he brings another perspective into teaching, especially argumentative writing,” Craw said.
Maginity believes that English is one of the most important subjects you can learn. Articulating ideas, comprehending text, critical thinking, and how literacy is the ability to not immortalize your thoughts are some of the things he can teach students well.
So far in Craw’s class, Mr. M has taught argumentative essays and has read Romeo & Juliet with the class.
“I have a lot of favorite memories, but the two sides argument activity was so fun watching everyone argue, but I would say reading through Romeo and Juliet was fun just because I got to see the students get more and more into it and like to really read into it,” Maginity said.
Maginity originally didn’t like Romeo and Juliet, but the students helped him love it eventually. He didn’t appreciate Romeo and Juliet as much as he does now. Reading with the class helped him learn to enjoy it.
King James is a junior student in Craw’s class.
“Mr. M gave me an 80/100 on my reality TV claims, and that really helped me because I didn’t do a good job on it,” James said. “I like that he’s young.”
Maginity’s student teaching experience assured him that teaching is what he wants to do in the future. Maginity would love to teach here at Delta, but there’s not a particular place he wants to teach, although he does want to stay in Indiana for the first five years.
“(Student teaching has been) my favorite memory in college,” he said. “I will say I am a much worse student than I am a teacher, so student teaching has been a refreshing thing and I enjoyed most of it, if not all of it, so def student teaching.”
Freshman John Ranes likes that Mr. M has not been as shy as the first couple days and has been communicating better.
“What I don’t like is he is very intimidating, and he scares the frick out of me, but what I do like is how he pushes me to get my work done even though it makes me mad sometimes,” Ranes said.
Maginity wants to teach because he likes direct communication with students. He would not be a school administrator in the future because he likes teaching his subject, and more of his skills are involved in the classroom.
Maginity has pushed freshman Landon Brooks to be a better student.
“He’s good at teaching and making you get your work done,” Brooks said.
