Andrew Easton taught students how to create projects from wood. His son, Andrew W. Easton, taught students how to properly create a balance sheet and how to use their left pinkie fingers to type the letter “q.”
Andrew D. Easton, the third teacher in line to carry the family name, had no problem choosing a career.
“My dad and grandfather were inspirations to me,” he says. “Just seeing them being willing to serve other people, and being there for students and to help them with their pursuits.”
The current pedagogue answering to the name Mr. Easton educates young minds in ways vastly different from his forefathers.
While teaching English at Gardner Edgerton High School in Gardner, Kansas, he realized his pupils needed stimulation and motivation. He began teaching from the school library, where they processed essays on computers or read books from the comfort of couches. Easton walked around the room and answered questions.
“About three weeks in, some kids were done,” Easton says. “I asked those kids to get together and discuss the book (Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes). We had a competition in front of the principal. It made for a better use of their time.”
Those students who had not finished reading the book continued reading.
“That type of learning is called a flex model,” Easton says. “I didn’t know it at the time. I appreciated that we could get a lot of personal attention and one-on-one feedback.”
Four years ago, Easton and his wife moved to Omaha. Andrew found a job with Westside High School and expanded on his flex model. He arranged the classroom furniture to assemble different areas for group study or individual study, and created a goal sheet for his students. Then he experimented with videos to give students another choice of instruction.
Easton became like a high school student again, in order to create better videos.
“Matt Rasgorshek (a fellow Westside teacher) said he’d be happy to have me in his intro to video class,” Easton says. In order to learn, he forsook lunch for lectures, sitting alongside some of his English students.
“He wanted to know everything about video production,” says Rasgorshek, Westside’s former broadcast adviser now teaching at Creighton Prep. “Whenever he had an open period he would come in, take notes, ask questions. He’d come into my office and bounce ideas off of me.”
Easton had discovered a new passion, and by the end of the year, he made 40 videos to work into his teachings.
Some students desire a traditional learning format, however. When a student asked if he would lecture to her, Easton began lecturing to a small group while the others worked individually.
“The kids, he instantly hooked them,” says Rasgorshek. “All of them were engaged all the time. It was pretty cool to watch. Even in my classroom, the kids took to him.” FamilyGuide
