She could see it in their faces as she walked through the door and introduced herself as their new teacher, ‘Well, no one else has stayed very long, so you’re not either.’ Whispers spread around the room. They were saying if they acted bad enough maybe she would leave just like all the others, and then they could keep bringing in new teachers. It was January when she accepted a job teaching a class who had gone through four substitutes during the entire first semester. “It was a huge adjustment for them to come to terms with the fact that I wasn’t going anywhere,” math teacher Mrs. Lydia Coyle said. “Once they realized that, I was able to build a rapport with them, but there were some discipline issues at first.”
Coyle had to face many challenges and learned from that first class to become the teacher she is today.
High school was rough for her. She came to Rider as the new girl, and found it lonely and difficult to make friends at first, making her sympathetic to students now who are facing hard times or just need someone to talk to.
“It was real cliquish. I was a newcomer, so there really wasn’t any opening for me because people had already created the friendships they wanted,” Coyle said. “It was a school that was not very accepting of new people.”
Once she graduated, Coyle went straight to college, but she didn’t always want to be a teacher. In fact, her mother advised her not to go into the profession. She decided to pursue mathematics, because it had always been her strong suit.
“When I was in college, I started out getting my degree in accounting,” Coyle said. “After two years in that program, I came to the conclusion that it was one of the most boring fields that existed. I thought I seriously couldn’t wake up every day and crunch the same numbers over and over again.”
Having her son changed her mind on teaching, and Coyle began to substitute until she could get her teacher’s certificate.
“When I had my first child I realized I wanted a job that would allow me to spend as much time with him as I possibly could,” Coyle said. “The only job that really allowed me to do that was teaching.”
But her first job wasn’t as easy as she expected. According to Coyle, teaching is very different than substituting. That, combined with starting in the middle of the year teaching a class who had only had substitutes all first semester, made her first experience teaching full time difficult.
However, the hardest obstacle Coyle had to face was overcoming the gap between her high school generation and today’s students.
“When I was in school, I led a very sheltered life,” Coyle said. “I was in all AP classes, so where I was coming from, everybody was respectful to their teacher, everybody did their homework, and everybody followed the rules. I wasn’t really exposed to anything else. In the AP classes especially back then, there were no discipline issues. There was nobody that had an F in turning in homework. It wasn’t until I started teaching all levels that I realized there was such a range in the years that passed and how much students have changed, for the good and the bad.”
Dealing with these differences, she has developed her own style of teaching and way of understanding where the students come from. Junior Celeste Hernandez believes Coyle’s way of teaching is helpful and easy to understand because she is willing to explain concepts multiple times to her students.
“She’s patient, and if you don’t really understand it, she’ll show you, and show you what you did wrong,” Hernandez said. “She’s funny, which helps keep you awake in class, she’s willing to help you if you’re willing to help yourself, and she’s just a great teacher.”
Coyle says the aspects that she thinks make the best teachers are “strong discipline, but in the same regard flexibility, the ability to recognize when something’s not working and to change, organization, knowing your subject, and knowing what motivates the kids.” She hopes that she exhibits these characteristics and that her passion for math comes out in her teaching.
“I think a really successful teacher is truly happy when all of her students are successful,” Coyle said.