By Kara Beard,
Staff Reporter
As we continue to proceed through the 2010-2011 school year, we welcome new teachers into the building. During the past few weeks the most recent addition to the English class has been a sub filling in for English teacher Jenny Adams. Her name is Camille Kalmey.
Born and raised in Louisville, Kalmey started her education at an all-girl Catholic school called Sacred Heart Academy. With the strict rules and dress code, Kalmey still found interest in many of her regular studies.
“I was a little bit weird in school because I found a lot of my subjects interesting, I loved math and solving the problems but I also loved English and science. Most kids usually take a liking to one of those subjects but that was never the case for me, I liked them all,” said Kalmey.
After graduating from Sacred Heart Academy, Kalmey went on to college at IU in Bloomington. Not knowing that she wanted to be a teacher, Kalmey went on to pursuing a major in science.
“I didn’t really enjoy science as much as I did in high school but my counselor and others realized I was really good with kids so they are the ones who encouraged me to get into teaching.”
Once Kalmey graduated from IU with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and English, she started to pursue more and reach higher goals. She went on to getting her master’s degree in journalism education and to receive her specialist’s degree.
Moving forward in her career Kalmey started teaching at Scribner. She taught 7th, 8th and 9th grade English for one year and then transferred to New Albany.
“I never taught freshmen at New Albany, except Journalism 1 and yearbook since those classes had a mix of all grades. I did like it at New Albany, except some of the students at New Albany tended to act out, whereas Floyd Central students want to learn and try to explain things to you if they don’t get it,” said Kalmey.
After 11 years of teaching at New Albany, Kalmey’s husband, who works with Kindred Healthcare, got a job offer located in the south end of Florida.
“I don’t work because I’m being forced to,” said Kalmey. “I like working with students and seeing them develop,” said Kalmey.
It wasn’t long after Kalmey and her husband settled in their house, she started looking for a job and came upon a job offer at Saint Andrew Catholic School. Being Catholic and having attended a Catholic school when she was younger, Kalmey accepted the offer.
“Students, no matter where you go, tend to be similar in a lot of ways. They all seem to want to learn. But this school just seemed to be disorganized and it would get very frustrating trying to deal with it all as a teacher and that would have to be the biggest difference between Saint Andrew and Floyd Central– it’s nice working in a school that is organized.” said Kalmey.
It was not long after accepting the job offer at Saint Andrews, that she wanted to return to the New Albany/Floyd County area.
“The school wasn’t my reason for wanting to return, the community in general wasn’t what we wanted to raise a family in, so that’s one of the reasons we came back. The bright and sunny weather was nice, but I will not miss it,” said Kalmey.
However, she did not know that once she returned she would already have a job waiting for her at FC.
“One of my friends found out I was returning, and they told Mr. Jensen, so he contacted me saying Ms. Adams wasn’t coming back, and that’s how I ended up at Floyd Central. But, I really love it here, the teachers are great and they really look out for each other along with the students,” said Kalmey.
Yet, even though Kalmey has only been here a week and a half, she still sees a bright future ahead of her working at FC.
“The administration is on the ball, the teachers have respect for other teachers and the students are awesome and wonderful to teach and learn from as well, so I would definitely love to work here for many years to come.”