CHS teachers Chloe Root and Sarah Roldan share more than just the same subject, social studies. Both used to teach at the much larger Huron High School in Ann Arbor.

This is Roldan’s first semester teaching at Community High School. She’s currently teaching two world history classes at Community and one AP U.S. history class at Huron. She says she loves Community so far, but she also misses teaching more AP U.S. History classes at Huron, which she did for the past few years. “Sure it was a little tough getting used to Community’s policies; for instance, I wasn’t too crazy about the first name basis thing. But as time progressed I got more and more used to it along with everything else that was different here,” she said.

One major difference she noticed was the level of connection between staff members at Community. “[Community is] a smaller school so you seem to recognize most people and you also have closer relationships with the rest of the staff.” She also said that there was more “one-on-one attention” between students and teachers here and that students here had a lot more freedom and responsibility. “Something here that they definitely didn’t allow at Huron was giving students access to leave in the middle of class.” At first she thought it was weird having students randomly leave, but after a while she got used to it and can tolerate it as long as students don’t skip.

She thinks the student behavior here is also very different from that at Huron. “At Huron I’ve been sworn at and I’ve had to kick kids out of my class. The kids here appear to be a lot more engaged in class discussions and more respectful.”

She is flexible about her future teaching schedule. “As for next year I’m willing to teach anywhere but I am content and happy here at Community,” she said.

Social studies teacher Chloe Root started teaching here at the beginning of last year. “My experience here so far has been a great one,” She noticed a difference in the student-teacher relationships at Community: “Here I feel like you walk into a class and you’re pretty familiar with everyone so you feel a bit more comfortable, whereas at Huron, since classes are a lot bigger, you’re not so familiar with everyone.”

Root attended CHS when she was a kid; therefore she already was familiar with many of the traditions here, and most of the staff. “It was probably the best welcome I have ever had; it felt like I was coming home.”

However, Root’s favorite thing about CHS is the responsibility level of the students. “I love not having to deal with all the dumb stuff like signing hall passes for people, or follow them around like cops. I just hate all the disciplinary stuff that I think is a waste of time, because people here do what they’re supposed to do, which most of them do, you can learn and do really cool stuff, but if you’re not, that’s your problem and you suffer the consequences.”

She says that Community as a whole is one of the best public schools in Michigan because students have the freedom to progress as much as they’d like without limitation and most of the students here are smart enough to not abuse this privilege.

Both teachers think Huron is a good school and the staff and students there are great. However, they prefer the policies at Community, and since it’s smaller. everyone seems more comfortable around each other. Their transitions haven’t been too difficult and both have enjoyed teaching here at Community so far.