Q: Tell us a little bit about yourself and what hobbies/sports you do.
A: My name is Jeremy Schuitman, I’m a teacher here at Huron high school. Right now my sports mostly involve watching my children. But if I get a chance to do something, I like to ride my bike. So mountain biking, and probably running, though with my recent knee surgery. It’s been a little slow.
Q: What do you teach and why?
A: I teach a couple math classes. I teach AP Statistics, I teach one of the IB HL classes, and I teach PreCalculus right now, and this might come as a shock, I do not teach here because of my love for math, though, I do love math. I really enjoy helping high school kids on their journey. So if you learn how to learn and you learn how to communicate and you learn how to collaborate, then you can do anything. And I just use math as my medium.
Q: Have you always been interested in teaching?
A: I started off wanting to become a professional basketball player as my first interest, then a NASA engineer, but I did a couple of internships and found that teaching was a fit for me because I can’t stop talking. And I really enjoy it because I had a lot of really good teachers and I had a lot of really good leaders in my life that helped me so I’m hoping to provide that for other people.
Q: What/who inspired you to become a teacher?
A: Both of my parents are teachers, so that’s where it came from originally. Also, I had great teachers and coaches in high school. And so just like a young Jeremy needed some people in his life to help him maneuver and make some good decisions. And so that’s why I wanted to become a teacher.
Q: What do you do in your free time?
A: I have three children. They keep me very busy. But l do lots of family stuff, and my children play a lot of sports. They do a lot of stuff. We do a lot of that but I guess in our free time we like to camp, we like to boat, we like to hike, and we like to go out to eat. So that’s always cool.
Q: What is one motto you will always live by?
A: One motto I will always live by is dream big. You guys can accomplish so much that you don’t even realize how much you are able to accomplish or what you want to accomplish. But just keep shooting for whatever you want. And make it bigger.
Q: What is your favorite teaching moment?
A: So my favorite teaching moment is when you’re doing math, and sometimes it’s hard to motivate kids in math. I know if you’re reading this right now you know sometimes you’re so excited about math, but sometimes it is hard to motivate kids. When kids realize that they can do it, even though they don’t want to do it and they might not love it, they realize they can be successful at it. So sometimes in class, it’s the “ohh” moment when you hand back a test and students say “I can’t believe I got that wrong” or “I totally know how to do that”. And then they make the correction and it turns out to be great.
Q: What surprised you about this year?
A: The schedule always surprises me because there is always an early release day or kids are on a field trip when I don’t expect there to be. But I mean, this year is just like every other year and I’m gonna go back. I mean, the kids always surprise you like when they haven’t been to school in a week. Also, the school board being $25 million in debt was a big surprise.
