After 5 wonderful years, Mr. Benjamin Tinsley, Upper School French Teacher, has decided to part ways with Germantown Academy.
Mr. Tinsley’s teaching career started almost 10 years ago at other independent schools like The Shipley School. After applying to the job, recommended to him by a former GA French teacher and Ms. Carol Ayers, Upper School Spanish teacher, Mr. Tinsley started a new page in his teaching career at GA.
As a French teacher, Mr. Tinsley has a love of learning for multiple cultures and foreign languages. However, it is not only the language that inspired him to come teach at GA, but the students.
“I know that as passionate as I am about teaching French, I’m most interested in teaching kids and working with young people and feeling like I can help unlock the potential within them and then kind of let them soar,” Mr. Tinsley said.
Aside from teaching his own knowledge to all his students, he found that GA has helped him to develop his own personal teaching style, as well as grow into teaching a wide variety of students.
As an avid reader and learner, he was able to put himself in his students’ place when trying to find ways in order to benefit both the community and his students. His growth mindset has propelled him very far as a teacher.
“My time at GA in particular has reignited within me how important it is to be always learning and to constantly be growing,” Mr. Tinsley said. “I’ve grown so much as a teacher, even if just to better defend my approaches and better explain to people why I do what I do. It’s really made me be a learner again and put me in the shoes of my students and all that”.
By teaching foreign languages, he was able to find connections to how students have felt when in a classroom. Mr. Tinsley values the experiences he is able to give his students by teaching them through his own version of risk-taking in his teaching methods.
“We tell students that they have to take risks and stuff, and then sometimes we don’t model that for you. So the idea of being lifelong learners means doing it now and showing you what it means to be learning and to try a lesson and it works a little bit and so we go back and tinker with it,” Mr. Tinsley said.
Over the course of the past year, Mr. Tinsley observed the impact of his own teaching in his French 3 Accelerated class.
“They’ve grown so much and I’m just so proud of that group of kids in how much they’ve trusted the process and leaning into growing in the language without fear of failure”, Mr. Tinsley said.
Looking back at GA, he feels that these years of growth and progress, by learning from his own students, has helped him to achieve more of his goals as a teacher.
“I feel like I’ve grown a lot since I’ve been here, and it’s reminded me how important it is to always be growing, always be learning, always be reading, always be trying to get better,” Mr. Tinsley said.