At Crestview High School, located in Okaloosa County in Florida’s Panhandle, they say “once a bulldog, always a bulldog.” That certainly is true for Martin Vickers who graduated from Crestview around two decades ago and recently returned to his alma mater as a teacher.
Like most journeys, Vickers’ return to Crestview High School had a few unexpected turns along the way. Even in high school, he knew he wanted to become a teacher. But, when he graduated college with his English degree and a minor in education, Vickers struggled to find a teaching job. At that time, Florida did not have the teacher shortage we are currently experiencing and many school districts simply were not hiring teachers without prior experience. So, Vickers put his English degree to use in another realm and became an editor.
While he enjoyed editing, he never gave up on his dream of becoming a teacher. As he puts it, “I never was fully satisfied sitting behind a desk all day…I really wanted to work with young people. I’d been influenced by so many wonderful teachers, and I wanted to have the same influence.”
In 2009, Vickers got the job offer he’d been waiting for. He left his job as an editor and began his teaching career in Walton County. Taking this job meant a pay cut and a 45-minute commute to and from work, but it was all worth it to finally begin his teaching career.
While teaching middle school in Walton County, Vickers made it a priority to meet students where they are and to make sure every single one of his students felt supported. This is perhaps best exemplified with how he supported one of his students who was deaf.
As he explains it, “We had an interpreter, but there were times—maybe before or after school—the interpreter was not there, and I wanted to communicate with the student. So, I started going home at night and studying American Sign Language. I never got great, but I got to where I could hold a basic conversation…there has always been a desire to find ways outside of my norm to help people.”
Vickers taught in Walton County for eight years, but Okaloosa was still his home. So, when the opportunity came to teach closer to home, he couldn’t pass it up. He taught at Davidson Middle School for a few years before returning to his alma mater and teaching at Crestview High where he teaches today.
Vickers began noticing more and more students who were English language learners enrolling at Crestview. As he had done once before, he took it upon himself to study another language so that he could connect with his students. As he puts it, “I wanted to get to a point where I could talk with them so I wouldn’t have to constantly use a translation app…so I started picking Spanish back up with Duolingo and different things.”
What began as a way to connect with his students and refresh the skills he learned when took Spanish all four years he was a student Crestview became something more when two of Crestview’s three Spanish teachers retired in the same year. Vickers approached his administration and asked what they would think about him making the switch from being an English teacher to a Spanish teacher. As it turned out his administration was “super supportive” of this goal.
Vickers went back to school to study Spanish at Northwest Florida State College and immersed himself in the language by re-reading his favorite novels in Spanish. With a lot of hard work and perseverance, he was able to gain enough mastery of the Spanish language to pass the subject area exam and add Spanish to his teaching certificate.
Now in his third year of teaching Spanish, Vickers had a true a full-circle moment working alongside Leah Merritt who was his Spanish I teacher. Of his former teacher turned colleague, Vickers says, “Ms. Merritt was an amazing teacher then. She is an amazing person now. I am so thankful for the opportunity (to work alongside her).”
There has been a lot of change in Vickers’ sixteen years in the classroom teaching in different counties, different grade levels, and different subject areas. Amid the change, one constant has been a desire to continue to learn and to challenge himself to find ways to better connect with his students.
One hope that Vickers has for his colleagues around the state is they, too, will consider picking up a second language. Not everyone needs to become fully fluent like he has, but his closing advice is “if there has even been an interest (in studying another language), the students who speak another language are super encouraged by anything you can pick up.”
With the love and passion Vickers brings to his classroom, there can be no doubt that he is keeping the Crestview High School tradition alive and that like him, his students will always cherish their time as a bulldog.
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