#MNPSVoices: Jan Esterline, Overton High School

From the Metro Nashville Public Schools:

January 28, 2021

#MNPSVoices: Jan Esterline, Overton High School

Jan Esterline’s path to becoming an accomplished educator is fascinating. He was born and raised on a dairy farm in central Pennsylvania, where he milked cows, baled hay, and did many other chores.

“My dad didn’t speak English when he started to elementary school because his grandparents, who spoke a German dialect, lived with his family,” said Esterline, a math teacher at John Overton High School. “I never had a desire to learn his Pennsylvania Dutch or to be a farmer, but I wasn’t sure college was right for me either. My English score on the SAT was so low, I had to start college on probation to see how I would do. Through that season of my life, music was my passion, and I lived it every second.”

After earning a degree in Music Education from Penn State, Esterline taught general music in the classroom and loved it so much, he immediately went back for a second bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education. While teaching high school band and chorus in Pennsylvania, he started writing music, had his first songs and arrangements published, and decided to move to Nashville for a music career.

For 10 years, Esterline copied charts – by hand – for orchestra arrangers, wrote children’s and youth musicals (one of which was nominated for a Dove Award), and transcribed piano parts for print. Sometime later in life, he got married and decided to take a break from teaching in the traditional classroom. He managed a banquet service at Gaylord Opryland Hotel for a season.

“This is where I fell in love with the people groups from around the world who worked there,” he said. “When I asked any of them how I could help them be successful in the U.S., they all wanted one thing – English classes. At one point, I taught four two-hour classes two days a week for up to 40 employees per class!”

That renewed passion for teaching English as a second language motivated Esterline to go back to school and earn a master’s degree from Trevecca and look for a teaching job. He said he’s grateful that Principal Michael Westveer took a chance and hired him when he was 54 years old to teach EL (English Learners) students at Goodlettsville Elementary and later at Ruby Major Elementary School.

In 2016 he made the jump to teaching math and technology at John Overton High School’s Students with Interrupted Formal Education (SIFE) program. For two years he taught the after-school tutoring program for EL students at Overton, and this past year he finished his endorsement to teach high school math and began teaching Integrated Math 1 to ninth-graders.

Given the current virtual teaching environment, Esterline has found creative ways to inspire his EL students.

“Teaching virtually isn’t something that any of us were prepared for. The first week or two were a whirlwind as I immersed myself in a new content area and explored ways to combine Schoology and online math platforms,” he said. “When TEAMS meetings and texts to parents didn’t reach half of my students and their families, I made the choice to go to their homes. If I got an invitation after offering to make a home visit, I jumped at the chance,’’ he said.

“So many of the students just needed one or two in-person sessions to see how the online classes worked and how to submit homework or take tests. Often, when I got them caught up in math, we took a look at their other subjects to see what they needed to work on,” Esterline added.

For Esterline, connecting with families is one of his favorite parts of teaching. There’s something powerful about a student seeing their parents or guardian discuss with their teacher their academic progress in their own living room.

“This past semester, I often visited homes during PLT time and one or two sessions after school,” he said. “Of course, some of our newest students with less English needed weekly encouragement and reteaching of lessons using my Google translator. I am grateful that this strategy made a difference for 14 of my lowest-scoring students who were able to pass math!”

When asked about any advice he can provide to new MNPS employees toward a successful career, Esterline said that most of his philosophy in teaching comes from his experience as a SIFE teacher and the wonderful workshops our district’s EL leadership provides.

“First and foremost, I am an advocate for my students! I may be the only person in the world who has this student’s best interest in mind and am willing to go the extra mile to see them succeed at whatever is important to them. Some EL students are here without parents or any family in a new culture while learning a new language,” he said.

“I try to meet them where they are and lead them as far as they will let me take them. Sometimes students are closed off and independent because they learned early on that everyone had an agenda, and the only safe thing was to not trust anyone. Changing their paradigm is a gradual process, and little victories are to be celebrated!”

Esterline sees himself as a mentor as much as a teacher. To walk alongside a student through the good and the bad requires relationship and a commitment to be there.

“Our EL students come from cultures that value relationship and family above all else. Mentoring students means staying with them through life’s challenges and not abandoning them when they make inappropriate choices or decide they have to quit school to support their family.”

According to Esterline, building a culture in his EL classroom is one of the most important things he can do to encourage buy-in, belonging, and engagement. The first weeks of school are a time to see what talents and gifts his students bring to the classroom and which students he wants to model leadership.

“This ties into the mentoring, where I have the opportunity to cast vision to my more advanced English Learners of how to encourage and lead the others in the room,” he said. “If I am not intentional about this, leaders will rise up in the void, and they may not take the class where I want it to go socially or academically.”

In his virtual EL classroom, Esterline asks students to keep their mics open so they can repeat everything he says as well as explain concepts to each other in their native languages. The Level 1 English speakers often experience a “silent phase” where they are not able to put English sentences together yet. Echoing vocabulary and phrases is the fastest way to grow spoken language, but it has to be encouraged.

“Students will have less of an accent if they mimic what I say as opposed to their peers,” Esterline said. “The lowest WIDA scores for high school are usually speaking, so this is high on my priority list. Not every teacher is comfortable with a constant chatter in the classroom, but it works for me. It’s imperative that they practice the basics while they are being taught the grade-level standards.”

When he is not busy in the classroom, Ernestine is very involved with his wife, Debbie, a retired psychological examiner, in their church and in the lives of former students. He loves to edit and contribute ideas to the history books that his sister, Vonnie Henninger, writes about their ancestors and their home area. They have great pictures of all of their great-great grandparents – and many of the great-great-great grandparents, too.

This press release was produced by the Metro Nashville Public Schools. The views expressed are the author's own.