Teachers can play a key role in the development of their students; An engaging class will draw students into the subject, help them discover new passions and interests and aid them in the development of crucial study skills and life habits. Overall, a skilled teacher can create a valuable learning experience that can have lasting effects both within and outside of the classroom. This is certainly the case for James Caldwell High School social studies teacher Ms. Hollman, who—after nearly three decades of teaching here—is retiring.
Career overview
Following five years of teaching several social studies classes at Edison High School, such as U.S. History I & II, AP U.S. Government and World History, Ms. Hollman has spent the rest of her career at JCHS. She has taught many of the same classes in addition to a variety of new topics within the realm of social studies, including the AP counterparts of U.S. History I & II, World Cultures, Human Behavior, Personal Finance, and a number of elective courses which are no longer available.
Ms. Hollman has even introduced her own Social Studies course to the curriculum: Holocaust and Genocide. It is offered as a Dual Enrollment class in which students intricately study the horrific acts of mass murder of the past.
“I have enjoyed teaching all my courses,” Ms. Hollman shares, “but especially AP US History II. ”As a current “APUSH II” student, I can agree with her that “It’s fun to discuss history on a high level of analysis and evaluation,” and she added that she has “really enjoyed watching my students rise to the challenge and grow as historians. It’s been rewarding to see students develop their writing, analytical skills, and study habits.” Ms. Hollman also shared that this class not only makes for “a challenging course for students,” but also puts her to the test due to “the amount of content and skills that need to be taught” in a short period of time.
Ms. Hollman considers the most rewarding part of having taught at JCHS over the course of the past 27 years to be “working with students.” “As a whole”, she views the (approximate) 3,000 students that she has taught as a “great group of kids” who genuinely “want to learn and be successful in school” and “enrich the overall environment.” Looking back on the multiple decades of “entertaining” and “intellectually interesting” students whom she has had the pleasure of teaching, Ms. Hollman exclaims, “working with kids keeps you young!”
Plans for the future and final statements
While Ms. Hollman may be preparing to enter retirement, she plans to be just as active—if not more so. In retirement, she intends to “play lots of tennis and pickleball, ski more often, and improve my guitar playing” all while potentially working in a different educational field of a similar nature to tutoring, though she is not exactly sure what that would be yet.
As her final year at JCHS draws to a close, Ms. Hollman hopes that “all my students have gained something from my classes that will help them be more successful in college and in life, regardless of their career paths.”
I can more than attest to this, as APUSH II has marked itself as possibly my favorite class that I have taken as a high schooler so far. Ms. Hollman has constructed a class that is both rigorous and highly enjoyable by having us study and discuss the history of the United States from a variety of nuanced perspectives; her course checks all of the boxes as one that has greatly enhanced my interest in the past of my country and pushed me to be my best as both a person and a student.
I am not alone in saying that I am grateful to have gotten the opportunity to be Ms. Hollman’s student, and everyone on staff for The Caldron and in the school community wishes her luck with her future endeavors!
