Ms. Takacs on the first day of school

Hi my name is Erin Takacs and I am an English teacher in the Special Education Department at East Boston High School.  I absolutely love teaching and studying English and received my Bachelor of Arts in English from UMass, Amherst and my Master’s of Education from UMass, Boston.

Before I began my career in Education, I worked as a Caseworker for the Department of Youth Services, the Juvenile Justice system for the state of Massachusetts.  I worked with adolescents who ranged in age from twelve to eighteen and had been adjudicated delinquent and committed to the state for their criminal activity.  I primarily worked with these adolescents in the community after their completion of a rehabilitation program.  My goal was to keep the kids in the community and not have to return them to a locked facility.  I worked closely with the schools that my clients were attending, and this was where I realized that working in a high school was where I could have a bigger impact on children and teens who had faced a variety of struggles throughout most of their lives.

I am now in my sixth year at East Boston High School.  I am currently teaching tenth grade English and the new Civics elective.  I got involved in Civics after planning a service trip to New Orleans.  Last year, I worked with a fellow teacher and some amazing juniors.  We spent the year planning and fundraising for the trip, and a week in June helping to re-build homes that had been destroyed from Hurricane Katrina.  It was a phenomenal experience, and one in which I was able to see the concern that my students had for the plight of others.  The trip had a huge impact on my teaching and compelled me to find a way to get more students involved in social awareness and activism, which is why I am so thrilled to be teaching Civics.

There are so many challenges to being an Educator, and I believe as we get better and better in our practice, it is still so important to continue educating ourselves and learning more about the best ways to reach our students and to engage them into their learning.  No matter where I have been employed, I have always enjoyed the adolescents I have worked with and have found a common theme amongst them.  Teenagers like to be challenged, value structure, and need to be believed in.   It is my hope that the Civics course will meet and exceed these demands.