Most teachers stop teaching when the last school bell rings. But, Lake Highlands Junior High American History teacher Maureen Royer is only getting started at 3 p.m.
Royer has taught at Lake Highlands Junior High for 15 years. But for the last two years, she has participated in two after-school tutoring programs to help students.
Last year, Royer and the junior high’s coaches set up a tutoring program for athletes with below-average performances. The tutoring was available every afternoon, accept game days.
“I like to go to the games of the kids I teach,” Royer says.
The other program is in the evenings at Highlands Crest Apartments where Royer and other teachers help low-income elementary students who live in area apartments. Royer says there are many people who would be reluctant to go into “the apartments.”
“I wasn’t even thinking of that,” she says. “My boys were going away to college and I found that I just had more time for that sort of thing.”
“If they think you’re fair or they think you care, they have their own way of treating you. I don’t think the danger is there the way the papers and media make it out to be.”
When she is not teaching American History or tutoring, Royer is helping students she refers to as “the have-nots” in other ways. When a group of students were recently planning a trip to Washington, D.C., some students knew their parents couldn’t afford to send them. Royer campaigned for scholarships and was able to raise half of the necessary fees for three of them.
Royer also helps raise funds for Solid Foundation, a school for potential dropouts associated with Dallas Juvenile and run by neighborhood resident William Hill. Royer believes these students can be saved if given the proper attention.
“They’re not bad kids, they’re just not fitting in,” Royer says. “They have no one to look up to. Today there is a real absence of responsible male role models, but I think (Hill) is helping to change that.”
Royer buys additional resource books for the students she comes into contact with. She has purchased copies of the workbook “10 SAT’s” to help her student athletes prepare for the dreaded test. Royer says it all goes back to the difference in the way the haves and have-nots are treated.
“They just love the Merit Scholars,” she says. “I can get almost unlimited funds for my honor students, and that’s great. But those kids are going to do okay anyway. It’s the other ones they need to be worrying about.”
Royer says she doesn’t have a teaching philosophy, but she does have a goal for her students.
“I want to prepare them for life and how to communicate with adults. I’m really big on body language and respect for people. Not just teachers, but everybody.”
