Impact Stories: Meg
Skip Retirement. Shape Tomorrow’s Tech Leaders Instead.
Educating students for life after high school grows more sophisticated with the times – and more costly. Schools can rightly decide their students need a basic knowledge of computer science, but they can’t always hire additional educators to teach it. Many of those determined to offer such classes have relied on their existing business teachers to add CS courses to their workload.
Sometimes, though, a business teacher jumps at the chance to take over CS courses, as Meg Mauger did at Jay County Junior-Senior High School in Portland, Indiana.
Right Place, Right Time for Teaching Computer Science
Working as an entrepreneur and in the oil and gas industry had allowed Mauger to retire while still in her 40s. Though she lived in Denver at the time, a national tourist destination with 2.8 million residents, she got bored.
“I had nothing to do,” Mauger said. “I was playing golf, playing bridge, gaining weight, and it just wasn’t challenging.”
She decided to make a trip back home in 2016 that would give her all the challenge she desired (and then some).
Not much had changed during the 30 years she’d been gone. Portland is in the oil, limestone and dolomite area of Jay County at the halfway point along Indiana’s eastern border with Ohio.
The high school from which Mauger had graduated with a class of 350 students is now a junior-senior school that graduates closer to 250; 40% of the student population is economically disadvantaged (US News & World Report), making it a Title 1 school.
Mauger had planned to stay for just three days. But when her friends learned of a vacancy at the school left by a business teacher who’d quit on the first day of classes, they knew who should fill the position.
“Teaching personal finance had been my passion,” Mauger said. “I volunteered in Denver public schools for eight years, teaching economics and personal finance through their partnership with Junior Achievement. So when my friends said, ‘You should teach business at Jay County!’ I decided to give it a try. I taught personal finance and business math, and I absolutely loved it.”
She initially committed for nine months. Four years later, she was still there when another business teacher resigned, the one who’d been teaching Computer Science.
“When there were two business teachers left, the school said, ‘One of you is going to have to teach Computer Science.’ Well, I knew the other teacher was going to retire in a couple of years. I was an economics major undergrad and loved teaching business, but the school needed someone to teach CS. So I said I’d do it,” Mauger said. “So, I chose computer science; it didn’t choose me.”
She decided it was time to make CS its own pathway to expose students to greater opportunities after high school.
“Me being me, I always want more for my kids, so of course I’m going to turn CS into an AP course. I’ve been in training ever since.”
She trained in multiple programming languages. Between her CS and engineering classes, she now teaches five different software programs every day. She is assistant coach for the robotics team and replaced every computer in her lab with ones that can run CAD. And she found Nextech.
Nextech + Teachers = Students Overcoming Hurdles
Mauger currently has just 13 students in one CS class and nine in another. (“They’re not full by a long shot, but they’re going to be as my reputation builds,” she promised.) On the other hand, two of the three AP exams taught in the school are now in CS, thanks to her constant efforts to raise the bar on student expectations. Although Jay County is an Early College school, Mauger wants to see more emphasis on computer-science education.
“So many hurdles exist for our students going to college, and many go directly into the workforce,” she said. “Nextech wants to get kids workforce ready. They want students to see the opportunities, the jobs that exist for the future.”
Mauger believes that if you’re not in Marion County and the counties surrounding it, your chances of seeing people in tech industries are limited.
“We need to be getting a message out there to young people that it’s OK to be in this field, it’s OK to enjoy playing video games, it’s OK to be on your devices,” Mauger said. “The way Nextech presents itself is forward-thinking and appealing to the younger generation. They’re talking directly to students, helping them make good choices and building their skills for the workplaces they’ll be entering.”
Nextech also shows how anyone can work in tech regardless of their background. Tech professionals speak with her students during Nextech virtual field trips, and Mauger virtually hosts people like a local game developer who now lives in France.
“It really gets their attention. It excites my kids to be listening to people in the industry,” she said. “Nextech reaches across gender and race. They really present tech and computer science as open to everyone. My EL students take very quickly to coding – it’s their experience learning another language. It’s not text-driven, it’s doing-driven. It’s not reading a textbook; it’s oriented to understand the task.”
Nextech advocates for Indiana CS teachers, which makes their content more relevant for her and her students. Nextech trains teachers and finds the resources they need, which are creative and inventive. “I can’t envision a CS educator not wanting to be connected to Nextech.”
Educating students for life after high school grows more sophisticated with the times – and more costly. Schools can rightly decide their students need a basic knowledge of computer science, but they can’t always hire additional educators to teach it. Many of those determined to offer such classes have relied on their existing business teachers to add CS courses to their workload.
Sometimes, though, a business teacher jumps at the chance to take over CS courses, as Meg Mauger did at Jay County Junior-Senior High School in Portland, Indiana.
Right Place, Right Time for Teaching Computer Science
Working as an entrepreneur and in the oil and gas industry had allowed Mauger to retire while still in her 40s. Though she lived in Denver at the time, a national tourist destination with 2.8 million residents, she got bored.
“I had nothing to do,” Mauger said. “I was playing golf, playing bridge, gaining weight, and it just wasn’t challenging.”
She decided to make a trip back home in 2016 that would give her all the challenge she desired (and then some).
Not much had changed during the 30 years she’d been gone. Portland is in the oil, limestone and dolomite area of Jay County at the halfway point along Indiana’s eastern border with Ohio.
The high school from which Mauger had graduated with a class of 350 students is now a junior-senior school that graduates closer to 250; 40% of the student population is economically disadvantaged (US News & World Report), making it a Title 1 school.
Mauger had planned to stay for just three days. But when her friends learned of a vacancy at the school left by a business teacher who’d quit on the first day of classes, they knew who should fill the position.
“Teaching personal finance had been my passion,” Mauger said. “I volunteered in Denver public schools for eight years, teaching economics and personal finance through their partnership with Junior Achievement. So when my friends said, ‘You should teach business at Jay County!’ I decided to give it a try. I taught personal finance and business math, and I absolutely loved it.”
She initially committed for nine months. Four years later, she was still there when another business teacher resigned, the one who’d been teaching Computer Science.
“When there were two business teachers left, the school said, ‘One of you is going to have to teach Computer Science.’ Well, I knew the other teacher was going to retire in a couple of years. I was an economics major undergrad and loved teaching business, but the school needed someone to teach CS. So I said I’d do it,” Mauger said. “So, I chose computer science; it didn’t choose me.”
She decided it was time to make CS its own pathway to expose students to greater opportunities after high school.
“Me being me, I always want more for my kids, so of course I’m going to turn CS into an AP course. I’ve been in training ever since.”
She trained in multiple programming languages. Between her CS and engineering classes, she now teaches five different software programs every day. She is assistant coach for the robotics team and replaced every computer in her lab with ones that can run CAD. And she found Nextech.
Nextech + Teachers = Students Overcoming Hurdles
Mauger currently has just 13 students in one CS class and nine in another. (“They’re not full by a long shot, but they’re going to be as my reputation builds,” she promised.) On the other hand, two of the three AP exams taught in the school are now in CS, thanks to her constant efforts to raise the bar on student expectations. Although Jay County is an Early College school, Mauger wants to see more emphasis on computer-science education.
“So many hurdles exist for our students going to college, and many go directly into the workforce,” she said. “Nextech wants to get kids workforce ready. They want students to see the opportunities, the jobs that exist for the future.”
Mauger believes that if you’re not in Marion County and the counties surrounding it, your chances of seeing people in tech industries are limited.
“We need to be getting a message out there to young people that it’s OK to be in this field, it’s OK to enjoy playing video games, it’s OK to be on your devices,” Mauger said. “The way Nextech presents itself is forward-thinking and appealing to the younger generation. They’re talking directly to students, helping them make good choices and building their skills for the workplaces they’ll be entering.”
Nextech also shows how anyone can work in tech regardless of their background. Tech professionals speak with her students during Nextech virtual field trips, and Mauger virtually hosts people like a local game developer who now lives in France.
“It really gets their attention. It excites my kids to be listening to people in the industry,” she said. “Nextech reaches across gender and race. They really present tech and computer science as open to everyone. My EL students take very quickly to coding – it’s their experience learning another language. It’s not text-driven, it’s doing-driven. It’s not reading a textbook; it’s oriented to understand the task.”
Nextech advocates for Indiana CS teachers, which makes their content more relevant for her and her students. Nextech trains teachers and finds the resources they need, which are creative and inventive. “I can’t envision a CS educator not wanting to be connected to Nextech.”
