HS teacher Sara Thompson teaches what she learned at Badin to current students
It’s been decades since Sara Thompson scored on the basketball court for Stephen T. Badin High School, but she’s still lighting it up in its English Department.
The former shooting guard and ‘93 graduate now racks up accolades as English Department chair in her 17th year at Badin.
“Sara is a tremendous teacher; she has taught such a wide range of English classes while here,” says Dirk Q. Allen, Badin’s director of admissions and media relations. “She has created curriculum, taught the upper-level Advanced Placement and College Credit courses … and then, as part of her backstory, she was also a star basketball player at Badin who then played at the D-1 college level at St. Bonaventure.”
When the students find that out, it just adds to her credibility, he says. “It makes her that much more relatable. Students really enjoy her.”
The feeling is mutual.
Thompson loves her freshman classes and the discussions and personal discoveries that ensue from reading books like The Five People You Meet in Heaven. Over the years, she realized she had a particular affinity for students nearing the end of their Badin careers.
“I have taught every class at every level, but found my niche with seniors,” she says, largely because of the conversations about curriculum and the next phase of life at which seniors find themselves.
Another reason? Thompson loves the senior curriculum, which includes short stories, King Lear, A Streetcar Named Desire, All My Sons by Arthur Miller, All Quiet on the Western Front and one Thompson says has revealed particular relevance in a pandemic, Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.
“It’s very rewarding when you see that they grow from it,” Thompson says of the texts they read. “I like it when the students say, ‘I’m glad we read that, I didn’t think I’d enjoy it, but really did.’”
Current Badin students benefit from strong writing instruction designed to create effective lifelong communicators, a demanding reading program and a top-notch staff that makes up the English Department, Thompson says. “Our teachers are dedicated, intelligent and insightful and our curriculum is amazing.”
Thompson’s students also get the benefit of legacy from legendary Badin teachers they will never know except through Thompson’s teaching. They inspired Thompson to become a teacher.
The first, Mrs. Vido, was memorable, demanding, energetic and exacting, but also supportive of her students, Thompson says.
“She demanded you were going to do your best for her,” and that intensity and high expectation spoke to the competitive athlete in Thompson.
The other teacher she most admired, Greg Renneker, became a mentor when Thompson stepped in to be a long-term substitute for him after she graduated college from Miami University, where she transferred for her last two years.
Covering his classroom, she loved being herself at Badin and being Renneker’s liaison to his then-current students and staff. “I really loved that,” Thompson says.
It solidified the notion that Badin would be a great place for her when the opportunity came.
Though it was awkward at first to interact with her own former teachers as peers, she soon felt at ease, realizing she could make her teaching career what she wanted it to be at Badin.
“I have loved every minute of it,” she says.
