Matt Dickinson joins Spanish teachers

Matt Dickinson joined the school to teach Spanish this year.

1. What did you do before Prosper and/or teaching?

“I have been teaching for 10 years. Before here, I was at a small school called Prairiland High School. I coached a bunch of sports there, and then I moved on to Paris High School. That is where I was for the last five years. I was the head girls soccer coach there and assistant volleyball coach, and I taught Spanish.”

2. What’s the craziest thing that has happened while teaching or in your past career?

“It was the first couple years I started teaching when we had hall duty in between periods. We had to actually stand out physically in the hall, and it wasn’t necessarily in the space right next to our classrooms, so we couldn’t always see directly into our rooms. Someone during the passing period that was coming into my class … they let off pepper spray or something into the room, and it was so bad we had kids starting to have reactions. We actually had to evacuate the room and have people come in and clean it out.”

3. Favorite part about teaching?

“Just getting to interact with kids every day because each kid is different, so you get to see a lot of unique things that you may not notice. Learning from the kids in class, not just necessarily about anything in particular, just random things about life or perspectives they have that you may not of thought of.”

4. The goal for yourself and your students this year? 

“The goal for my students is for sure to develop a love for a foreign language. If not a love, then an appreciation for it where they can see the benefits and see that it’s not impossible to learn a new language. Athletically, I would love to be successful on the field or on the court. I like being able to lead by example and show them ways to be a good person, and usually, that leads into them being a decent player. For me, it’s just to survive the year. It’s such a big change. Prosper High School has more students than my entire district that I came from.”