Matthew Gardner—a social studies teacher at Brunswick High School. He has a tremendous personality and makes every one of his classes exciting. In addition to his teaching responsibilities, Gardner is the golf coach at Brunswick High, as well as the advisor for Brunswick’s chapter of the Black Student Union.
Before his teaching career, he amassed many interesting stories as a corrections officer in his home state of New York. He came down from the Empire State 4 years ago to arrive in Brunswick and continue his teaching career. We interviewed Gardner to get some information about himself:
How long has he been teaching at Brunswick?
“This is my 4th year here at Brunswick.”
Do you have any rough experiences or iconic moments as a corrections officer?
“You know I didn’t do it that long but you know, rough experiences or iconic moments, I’m not sure I’m allowed to talk about those legally.”
What about your history class excites you the most?
“I love the content that I teach, like I really like just the world history aspect of it so I really enjoy the content that I teach and of course I get all kinds of new and exciting personalities every semester so that’s a lot of fun too.”
What would your alternate subject be to teach and why?
Outside of social studies… “I think English would be the other one. I feel like it’s the only one that I could be confident enough to teach. Yeah, I have no art skills so I can’t do that, I can’t do math, I gave that up in 11th grade, so I can’t do that. So probably English would be the way to go.”
What brought you to Brunswick and if you had an alternate school where would it be?
“When I moved from New York I decided I wanted to work for Frederick County, and they had a weird interviewing style but in general I interviewed for the school. The position offered was what I teach now which is the modern world and the electives and I interviewed for Middletown Middle and they wanted me to teach 6th grade. I had made a promise to myself when I left New York I would do everything I could to avoid teaching middle school again after 5 years and uh I just enjoy teaching the high school grade level more. And then I made Brunswick my home, I live in the community and it reminds me a lot of my hometown, small.”
What is your least favorite part about teaching?
“I don’t wanna give a cliche answer and be like there’s nothing because I love my job, I definitely do love my job but you know what, how early we start. That is my least favorite part and I think you’ll probably agree with me on that. I don’t like being here at 7:30 a.m., I loved the 2 hour delay schedule, I wish we could keep that all the time. That was a lot of fun.”
Very few teachers are as loved as Mr. Gardner is loved by his students. No one knows what interesting or fun conversations you could have with him on any given day, and this uncertainty is what keeps students coming back for more and more.