Everyone loves Mr. Richer as a teacher, whether you’re in his class or not. Many students have had him throughout the years, and he has even experienced the early years when Fieldston was figuring out who they wanted to be. In fact, he’s been here for almost 20 years! Have you ever wondered more about him? Well, we learned a lot about him in this interview.
Why Math?
Mr. Richer was a history teacher and a PE teacher. So, why would he choose to teach Math? Mr. Richer never even thought about teaching Math in the early days of middle school. He usually subbed in for classes, considering he had another job to do. One day, a teacher had asked him to be a substitute teacher, so he agreed. He had never known how much he had enjoyed teaching math until that day. Experiencing being a math teacher was a fun moment for him. After that, he decided to become a math teacher, and he has loved it ever since.
What do you think has changed at Fieldston over the years?
Mr. Richer has been working at Fieldston for 19 years.“Fieldston has had so much growth over the years,” said Mr. Richer. “The middle school opened 15 years ago and it’s nice to see that the middle school feels established and really its own division of the school. It took a really long time to make the middle school really seem like it is a fully established place,” he said. In the early years at Fieldston, the middle school was in the high school, so when the middle school opened up as its separate building, the school realized that the middle school needed its own core values. These months to years were when the school realized what they needed to value to flourish our ethical community. Now, the school really knows its values and feels established to support all of the students. “You have to give time time,” he said.
How do you think the experience of being a middle school student now is different from being in the first or second form when there was no middle school?
The middle school was originally a hallway in the high school, but now the middle school has its own building. The middle school was also kind of integrated in the high school. The middle schoolers and the highschoolers passed each other in the hallway, and they got to interact a bit. This helped the high schoolers and middle schoolers learn from each other, and the older kids to give advice and tips to the middle schoolers. It helped make the highschoolers feel like role models for the younger students.
What are some of your most memorable moments and why?
“This is a hard question to answer,” he said. “There are so many memorable moments that I want to share, though.”
After lots of thinking and thinking about this question, he finally exclaimed, “My favorite moment is this moment happening right now.”
At first, we had no idea what he was talking about, so we asked him what he meant.
Mr. Richer said that though there were so many memorable moments, having conversations with students throughout the day were really memorable. He said that it really let him get to know the students outside of the classroom, and connect with them more.
“I love getting to know my students,” he said.
Mr. Richer is a great teacher, from the actual teaching to getting to know his students. Even people who don’t have him know from just the way that he says to, ‘put your phones away’, or, ‘get to class’, that he is a phenomenal teacher.
