A new school year has started which means there are many new faces in the hallways and classrooms of Cinnaminson High School. One new face is Ms. Kathleen Stibler, an algebra and geometry teacher who has come from Cinnaminson Middle School to help fill a void in the math department. As one of the newest members of the CHS staff, she brings with her extensive experience in both the educational and corporate fields.
“I have been teaching for 11 years. 10 years at the middle school and a year before that,” Stibler said. “Before that, I was an engineer and I worked for Lockheed Martin for 17 years.”
Stibler attended Holy Cross High School before earning her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in applied mathematics from Rutgers University. Later she went on to pursue her master’s in education from the American College of Education after she began teaching. Stibler acknowledged that she had no interest in teaching when she first began her career as an engineer.
“It was a very easy decision to study applied. I never thought I’d ever want to teach, so probably… 15 or 16 years into being an engineer I started thinking about it,” Stibler said. “I just decided that once I started doing it I loved it, and I didn’t know I was going to love it, which was so surprising to me. I would say teaching felt more natural, like I knew what to do. When I was an engineer it wasn’t as natural.”
Stibler taught at CMS for a decade, heading the honors geometry curriculum. She said she wanted to teach higher topics in math, which was what honors geometry helped satisfy. The problem, however, she said was that the class was only offered one period of the school day, and she felt that teaching younger students was not something she was very passionate about. So, in an attempt to help solve this problem, Stibler said she personally requested to be moved to CHS.
“I asked for it. It was a choice,” Stibler said. “I wanted this mix between loving the students and loving the content. And now I get that, I get all of that here. I get to teach higher math, I get to teach older students, and it’s just a great combination for me.”
However, CMS was, and still is a special place for Stibler. She said she misses her fellow teachers, noting how CMS has a wonderful staff, and how her connection with her peers felt like family. Luckily, Stibler said, the transition between schools has been a positive experience.
“The transition’s been great, like I said. Everyone at every level, the office, the math teachers, the other teachers in the school, the administration, everyone has been so wonderful, so welcoming to make that transition really easy for me,” Stibler said. “When you come here and you teach a new subject it’s a lot of work to figure out how you want to teach it, and how you want to go about it in a classroom. So I definitely have a lot of work outside of school, outside teaching, but it’s worth it, 100% worth it.”
Despite only being at the high school for a couple of months so far, Stibler seems to have very quickly grasped what it means to be a Cinnaminson Pirate.
“I think that they have the most Cinnaminson pride I have ever seen, it is at a high here, so I love that they have so much Cinnaminson… pirate pride. Pirate pride is at an all-time high,” Stibler said.
In teaching at the high school Stibler has gotten a chance to reunite with, and even teach, some of her previous students from CMS.
“I love it because I already know them, I already have a relationship with them, and… it’s not the same relationship because they’re not the same people they were three years ago, or four. So, they’ve grown up so much, so it’s really nice to see who they’re becoming,” Stibler said. “They’re different because they’re older now, so you can talk to them a little bit differently, which I really like, you interact with them differently. You know, they’re heading to be adults, and so I like those conversations.”
Stibler also recognized how the atmosphere at CHS is different from that of CMS. She expressed that she thought students at the high school were comfortable with themselves, and not trying to be somebody they are not, while students at CMS are very different in their personalities and how they act.
“But there is something to be said, most people either like middle school or they don’t, but I love middle school kids because they are in this really cool space where they’re trying to be older, but they’re still younger,” Stibler said. “Everybody is trying to be like everybody else, so they’re trying to outdo each other in things that they’re doing and in behaviors, good and bad, it’s not all bad or anything, but it’s like they’re trying to figure it out and here at the high school everybody’s so… everybody’s themselves.”
Stibler sees the upperclassmen as the ones who set the example of what it means to be a high school student for the underclassmen. However, now that Stibler has been moved to CHS, she still faces some obstacles that are yet to be overcome.
“Really just, since it’s new content, figuring out how I wanted to teach the class, and that sometimes is […] a work in progress, you have to try something and it doesn’t work you try something else, so that just takes time, and that’s just because I was teaching some things completely new,” Stibler said. “I want to get down, comfortably, the process, like the strategies I want to use in the classroom. I want to build up my juniors so that they feel comfortable going into their senior year.”
As a teacher, Stibler said her favorite part of teaching is the “aha” moment. Stibler said she really enjoys it when a student finally understands what is being taught in the classroom and also loves interacting with her students on a personal level. Stibler outlined what she believes is most important as a teacher.
“I think that collaboration is very important,” Stibler said. “The great thing about students is that, as a teacher, you can say something 10 times and it just doesn’t click for the student, but a kid shouts out something from across the room, and all of a sudden a student understands, and I think it’s very important, from a teaching perspective, for teachers to let students teach each other.”
In addition to being a teacher, Stibler is also a mother of four. She said she loves to read but is very busy during the school year and often does not have time to read unless she has free time or during the summer. Stibler also said she has begun going to the gym every morning before school, and acknowledged how it feels good to feel like she is accomplishing something for herself every morning.
As she continues her transition to CHS, Stibler said she feels lucky and grateful for the situation she is in.
“It’s just a fantastic opportunity, it’s such a fantastic district; not everybody gets to start over in their career, not everybody gets to make a big decision and I got to do it twice,” Stibler said. “I met with Mr. Gorman and Mrs. Bearint, and they believed in me enough to say ‘Okay, yeah, I think you should come here and try it’, you know what I mean? So not everybody gets that opportunity and I just feel very fortunate.”
