Mr. Hedge is the student-teacher in Mr. Linboom’s class, who is currently teaching all Civics classes! He is currently a student at Eureka College and grew up in the area of North Pekin, graduating from Pekin High School. He is majoring in secondary education in history and is working on his minor in political science.
Mr. Hedge has expressed that he likes student-teaching because it’s a good experience while also being challenging. All in all, he has enjoyed the journey so far and enjoys being in the history classroom, looking to one day teach his own class full-time.
Balancing student-teaching while taking college classes is challenging at times, but he mentions that Eureka is good at applying resources. There are also five different students at Eureka that are doing the same student-teaching program along with him, which gives him people to communicate ideas with and discuss how things are going. He has the mindset that teaching comes first and then college comes second.
Mr. Hedge coaches baseball at Eureka but previously played for Eureka for four years. Balancing college, student-teaching, and coaching is a big commitment of his time, but he is still able to enjoy these activities. He tries not to let his feelings affect his performance at baseball, so he reminds himself to be in the moment and keep school at school and baseball at baseball.
He has said that his favorite part of the day is going home because he gets to see his dogs. He mentioned that they greet them with so much excitement and it makes his day. He enjoys watching sports like baseball and football, reading books (especially scary books), and watching scary movies. He also enjoys passing out candy to little kids on Halloween. October, and more specifically, Halloween is his favorite time of the year!
One interesting fact from Mr. Hedge is that President Reagan went to the same college as him! When asked what advice he would give a college student who is a student-teacher, he said, “Get your time management in order and ask for help when needed. So many people are willing to help, you just have to reach out.”
We are so excited to see Mr. Hedge both learn and teach at Dee-Mack throughout his time here. If you have any of Mr. Linboom’s classes, be sure to give Mr. Hedge your regards.
