Chamblee has a plethora of clubs and student organizations, all of which cater to the interests of different groups of students. Behind each and every club at Chamblee, there’s a teacher sponsor that is crucial to the club’s existence. With the variety of clubs also comes a variety of approaches to sponsoring a club, with some taking a more active approach and some letting the students leave.
“I like the clubs I sponsor to run themselves. I like the student officers to be the ones that kids look to first, because I think that’s what having a high school club is about,” said Hannah Postema, the sponsor for the Gender Sexuality Alliance and the Dungeons and Dragons Club.
While some sponsors prefer like to give more power to the students, others like being more involved.
“I’m really involved with Mock Trial when it comes to going to competitions and helping at practices,” said Sally Stanhope, the sponsor for No Place for Hate, Model UN, and Mock Trial.
Even if the teachers might have different levels of involvement, most end up sponsoring clubs for similar reasons, namely a passion for student development or even the club’s focus itself.
“It’s really fun to see the students pursue passions and talk to one another outside of the classroom,” said Fred Avett, a sponsor for multiple clubs, including Puzzle Club, Literary Magazine, and Aviation Club.
Due to the inherently structured and sometimes awkward nature of interactions in the classroom, this appreciation for spontaneous student interaction is shared by many teacher sponsors.
“I love seeing kids interact in unstructured time. When you’re a teacher, you’ve created a lesson that works within a very structured time. You have the warm up, you have the lesson, you have the closing. You have goals that you want to hit and reach and you want to see students make progress. In a club, all of those goals are going to be much more casual and social rather than intellectual or academic,” said Postema.
Even though most teachers share this one main reason for sponsoring a club, some teachers have more wide-reaching aspirations for the clubs and students they sponsor.
“A lot of the time I feel like Social Studies is really boring in the classroom. I hope that the clubs I sponsor make students more excited about what social studies can teach you about and being a global citizen,” said Stanhope.
The impetus for allowing student control of clubs often stems from this same sentiment—by letting students take the lead, sponsors hope to allow for more development and exploration of the students’ passions.
“In previous years, art club only had about ten people, but it grew exponentially this year because of the club president Daniel. Last year, the club wasn’t ran well by officers, but this year, [Daniel] wanted to be more active. I let him take control and he did a great job of advertising, now we have about 60 people,” said Lieu Nguyen, the teacher sponsor for Art Club.
Some teachers that sponsor clubs at Chamblee found it to be a great way to teach and learn in another meaningful way.
“There’s a lot of clubs that a teacher would already be interested in,” said Avett. “It’s going to enrich your time at Chamblee as a teacher and as an adult, and it enriches the students’ lives as well.”
