TEACHER FEATURE
Editor’s note: This is the third of a series of stories that introduce new teachers at Tracy schools.
Boys often follow in their father’s footsteps, and that’s just what Mitchell Buerkle did.
Well, not exactly.
Buerkle did end up going into education and is now a math teacher at Tracy Area High School. His father, however, teaches English.
This apple didn’t fall too far from the tree — just far enough as it turns out.
“My dad teaches English, so I had to stay away from that!” Buerkle said. “Did I excel in English? Probably, but I also excelled in other areas. With math, you get an answer all the time, that’s what I like about it.”
The oldest of three boys in his family, Buerkle graduated from Springfield High School just a little over five years ago and attended Winona State University where he earned a math and secondary math education degrees. He also ran cross country and track there, and is currently an assistant coach for the TMB cross country team.
Last spring, he taught business in the Rushford-Peterson School District after their business teacher resigned. Since he was already a sub there, he took over the business class.
This school year will be his first year of teaching math.
“In high school, I didn’t really know what I wanted to get into as far as my degree,” he said. “I kind of thought about architecture, maybe engineering. I took some CAD classes in high school, did some drafting. For me, it was always the ascent of helping people. Yes, you help people in that sense, but teaching, you interact with kids on a daily basis — that’s what I like.”
Buerkle understands that math isn’t going to be everyone’s favorite subject, so his goal is to help all his students in the subject, perhaps to the point where they will eventually like it.
“I think the biggest thing is establishing a relationship with the students,” he said. “If they’re seeing they’re heard, I think that level of trust will be established and they’re going to want to give you a little bit more.”
Building relationships at the high school shouldn’t be a problem for Buerkle, who has found himself in a number of different classroom setting throughout the last few years.
“I’ve had to do this a few different times; yes, it’s challenging, but it’s also rewarding because you get to know a lot of different kids,” he said.
The 24-year-old Buerkle said Tracy is a good fit for him since it’s close to home. His girlfriend, Regan Feit, lives in Sioux Falls. But being as young as he is, he is aware of the importance of his role as an educator and someone that should be respected by his charges.
“That’s the hardest thing about being a young teacher — that fine line,” he said. “A lot of the kinds might think we’re buddies or friends, but we still have to hold a professional relationship. ‘I am your teacher, but I do want to get to know you and help you succeed, whether it’s in the classroom or outside the classroom.”
The good part of being so young is that he can connect to the students maybe more than someone in their 30s or 40s. That alone should make building those relationships easier.
“All of their social media, I see the same thing,” he said. “I can relate to a lot of those things that some of the other teachers might not be able to.” than athletic competition. So enamored was Meidt with Frazier, the legendary leader actually petitioned the State to allow him to live in the Meidt home, but the State denied it. Bouncing from foster home to foster home certainly took a toll on the teenager and proved to be much more than an inconvenience when it came to competing.
“Going from one foster home to the next, I had to sit out a certain amount of time,” he said. “In ninth grade in Tracy, they went to state that year in football, and then I came over (to Minneota). I tried to play my sophomore year in Tracy, but it got taxing with the Minnesota State High School rules because of how many times I was moving. I had no control over any of that, other than my behavior.”
And that behavior, born from a fatherless childhood that saw his mother abandon him more than once, got worse as he got older. And foster care familiarity would eventually breed contempt for Frazier, whose bad decisions turned into a way of life.
“I was not a very good kid,” he recalls. “My mom had given me up, I didn’t have a dad.”
