Teacher at Norwalk's Roton Middle School wins statewide award

Roton Assistant Principal Joseph Devellis, Connecticut Department of Education social studies consultant Stephen Armstrong, Roton teacher Mark Jackson and Roton Principal Ed Singleton. Jackson received the Connecticut Council for the Social Studies John H. Stedman Passion for the Social Studies Teaching Award on May 24, 2023.

NORWALK — Here's how students describe Mark Jackson, an eighth grade social studies teacher at Roton Middle School: "caring," "engaging," "super funny," "super smart," "kind," "immersive," and "my mom, like, loves him."

Jackson has been teaching at Roton for 14 years.

The Norwalk educator also serves as the social studies subject area leader, eighth grade level leader, student council faculty liaison, indoor field hockey coach and a camp director for the Norwalk Recreation and Parks department in the summer.

"I wear a lot of different hats," he said.

Among those hats is "trusted adult," according to one of his students, Bella Calise. Or "father figure."

"In my essay, I wrote a lot about how Mr. Jackson loves his job and we always joke how Mr. Jackson's like the dad of the school," Ava Grenier, 13, said. "And like I sort of wrote about how he is a father figure to a lot of students."

Ava's essay is one of about 12 that Jackson's students submitted to the Connecticut Council for the Social Studies to nominate him for the John H. Stedman Passion for the Social Studies teaching award, which he won.

The award is unique among the council's accolades because winners are nominated by students — meaning that Jackson's students made the time to write 300- to 500-word essays for their beloved teacher.

"I didn't have a hard time figuring out what I wanted to say," Ava said.

Jackson's students agree: they are comfortable with him; he makes them feel like they can be themselves; they want to go to his class.

"Mr. Jackson is just one of those teachers that is kind of rare to have," Brody Bickerton, 14, said. "It's a more fun learning environment. Class, in general, is fun. You can look forward to it, which I can't say for many classes."

It's this fun environment that makes the students want to show up in class.

"But when you are comfortable acting like who you really are, it's better to learn," Amine Zakaria, 13, said. "You're happier and you're way more focused. And Mr. Jackson does that. He does."

His former students still rave about him, including student council member Phoebe Strickland, 14.

"I actually don't even have him as a teacher this year," Phoebe said. "He's the person I go to for, like, anything."

Jackson makes class fun in a lot of ways, his students say. He dresses up as historical figures, including a coal miner and George Washington, to name a couple.

He also creates an immersive environment. For a lesson on Mount Everest, while his students wore stuffed backpacks and climbed a ladder that represented the summit, he set the AC to a cool 60 degrees.

And he condemned his students to death by dysentery as they learned about the Oregon Trail in a simulation based on the ‘70s video game of the same name. It was a favorite lesson among the students, even though most got Bs and Cs as a result of their poor decisions on the trail.

Jackson said he makes class fun so that his students want to learn — and so he doesn't get tired of the same lessons.

"It's more keeping things fresh and relevant so that I'm not bored with the same thing all the time," he said.

"My philosophy of teaching is if I'm not having fun, neither are they," he said, referring to his students.

Jackson said he wants to be the teacher he didn't have growing up. He said he wasn't a class cut-up, but he wasn't paying attention the whole time, either.

"But I was just always bored with school because it was constantly just worksheets," he said. "I wasn't engaged."

Despite winning the John H. Stedman Passion for the Social Studies teaching award, that's not how Jackson thinks of himself.

"For me, I don't think of it as passion," he said. "It's just who I am — whether it's leading student council and some civic activity."

Jackson said he immerses himself in service to his community because that's how he was raised.

Ed Singleton, principal at Roton Middle School, said Jackson's involvement makes him stand out — and deserving of the award.

"I was very impressed with the way (the students) described him and were able to show how highly they thought of him and the caring ways that they thought about him," Singleton said of Jackson. "Not just only as a teacher, but as a professional and mentor, both in and outside the classroom."

Outside the classroom, Jackson serves his community. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, he said he delivered food to students and families in need — some of them were his own.

"That made me feel good," he said. "The families appreciated it."

Jackson said his favorite part of being a teacher is interacting with his students. That makes him feel good, too.

"I love seeing them grow as individuals, whether it's academically or personally," he said. "Over the course of the last 14 years, just seeing students grow and mature and even keeping in contact with students after they graduated from high school, seeing how they develop into adults — that's the most rewarding piece of this job."