Teacher Feature: Samantha McParland

Teacher+Feature%3A+Samantha+McParland

Thanusha Ragunanthan

One of the latest additions to the dedicated ERHS staff is Ms. McParland, a ninth and tenth grade English teacher. After being raised in Howard County, she attended Howard Community College and University of Maryland (UMD). Ms. McParland is not completely new to ERHS, having interned for fellow English teacher Ms. Holtz. Her teaching experiences include preschool part-time, preschool summer programs, Cedar Lane special education program, 7th grade at Bucklodge, and now ERHS. Ms. McParland was homeschooled until high school and her “awesome” English teachers were her inspiration to become a teacher. 

Although she was not super familiar with Prince George’s County growing up, after interning at Roosevelt she says she enjoys the “Roose community,” the “collaboration between teachers,” and with the administration in the English department. She admires that everything is a “team effort” and fellow english teachers always provide help when needed. Ms. McParland also believes the students at ERHS are awesome and there is great diversity because you get to interact with every type of student. She believes there is a “specific brand of very driven students at Roose” and great extracurriculars for students to engage in. 

She appreciates when her students invite her to theater productions, sports games, step team performances, etc. Xavier Sosa, a student who had Ms. McParland as an intern for Ms. Holtz, said she is “really fun, personable, and relatable” which “made it easier for kids to get along with her.” He also said she is very “interactive with all of her students, and always plans fun assignments for class.” Abigail Lopez-Freire, a student of Ms. McParland who also had her as an intern said she really enjoyed how involved Ms. McParland was with students and felt as if the classroom was a “little family.” Avari Ford, who currently has Ms. McParland as an English teacher, “loves her class because she makes everything interesting, very energetic” and “more alive.” One of the most surprising things Ms. McParland found out about teaching was when she was nervous about teaching two ESOL classes. Because her spanish wasn’t great, she was apprehensive but she ended up loving it. One of her favorite memories with them was acting out Macbeth. 

Ms. McParland is actually certified to teach theater and is interested in working with the theater program at Roosevelt. She loves incorporating her creative writing from UMD into her class with students. She is a singer and loves to bring music into class through a playlist and takes requests from students. She is Scottish which is another aspect she incorporates into her lessons. Ms. McParland is open to sponsoring clubs/organizations and wants to “slowly weasel [her] way into” them. 

Outside of school she often goes to the Folgers Shakespeare Library. She enjoys watching plays, musicals, playing board games, and obviously reading books, as all English teachers do. Some of Ms. McParland’s favorite board games are “Inis” and “Watergate” and some of her favorite books are Say Nothing and Caging Skies which inspired the popular movie JoJo Rabbit. Ms. McParland’s all time favorite author is Daniel Handler; her favorite book series by him is A Series of Unfortunate Events. All the great aspects of her teaching make it easy for ERHS to give her a warm welcome.