“I originally applied for an English position at Buffalo when I found out STMA was doing some budget cuts. I started job hunting last spring in March.  By April, Buffalo called me back for an English interview. I came in for that but they hired internally – they had someone in mind that they ended up going with – so I thought, ‘that’s it for Buffalo’. Soon, however, [Principal Mark] Mischke got a hold of me and said he knows my family. He just said we have a business position. And I thought, man, I really would like to teach. I didn’t know if I planned to teach business forever but I thought I’d give it a try,” Hagerty said.

Not only was this Hagerty’s first year at Buffalo but he wasn’t able to teach his true passion, English. Going into the school year Hagerty was asked to teach Personal Finance and Introduction to Business. 

“It went by really fast,” Hagerty said. “So jumped into quarter one, never taught Personal Finance or Intro to Business. It was a little bit of a whirlwind. I used a lot of other people’s resources but really created the class how I wanted to. You’re given previous teacher’s stuff and you can use it, make improvements or you can go with what you think would best work.  I was mixing it up as I went, I did some things that previous teachers did but I thought it was boring so I tried to make it more fun. That’s what I did second quarter, trying to revamp the whole class.”

Hagerty, however, wasn’t the only one experiencing changes. One Sophomore English class was churning through substitute teachers after a staff member resigned suddenly in November.  At the beginning of second quarter, the class had five different substitute teachers, ranging from one week with the class to just one day. 

Kiley Herbst ‘24 was enrolled in two classes without a steady teacher in late November. 

“It was awful. It was not good,” Herbst said. “I had two out of my four teachers who weren’t there at the beginning of the quarter. We were left with nothing and there wasn’t really anything we could do about it.”

“It was wild. Nothing got done,” Keifer Shun ‘24 said. “There was always a different substitute trying to teach you a different way. I remember the first guy tried to help us do a whole reading project and that didn’t work out. People were starting to give up.”

The solution to this problem? Hagerty. With another business teacher stepping in to take Hagerty’s current students at the beginning of the quarter, Hagerty was able to shift into the English position.

“They definitely threw me in the fire,” Haggerty said. “It was great. I forgot about tenth graders as a whole, there’s a lot more energy than classes with upperclassmen. It was different from what I did but I had the easiest gig ever with three tenth grade English classes in a row. They are all the same criteria, exactly the same. So as far as prepping goes, I was prepping for two different classes last quarter, and only have to worry about one now. A lot of it’s already done and given to me but all in all, I’m happy to be teaching what I am used to. After all, this is the stuff I know best.”

While this may have been a big change, Hagerty is enjoying every moment of it. He has brought a calming presence to all of his classes and his students couldn’t be more appreciative.

“He’s tried to help everybody get caught up and lowered some standards so people can actually get stuff done which is nice,” Shun said.

“He’s easier to make connections with,” Peyton Anderson ‘24 said, “just because he’s more vulnerable and willing to have a conversation about not even school. He’s just a really, really extremely friendly guy which is good, because then you can open up to him and ask him questions if you are stuck on a problem. When you have a strict teacher, nobody wants to be in that class anymore, right? He just makes the class better.”

Back in early November, Curry was diagnosed with a severe case of COVID-19. He was diagnosed with COVID pneumonia, which left him hospitalized and reliant on oxygen. After a couple of tough weeks, Curry has been making a slow but steady recovery. 

Buffalo’s NHS and Work Experience Classes set out a table in the lunch room containing magnets, homemade soaps, hot chocolate supplies, bath salts, and more all available for students and staff to buy. All proceeds go to Mr. Curry and his family.

“He [Curry] was really open with us, and talked about how frustrating COVID-19 was,” said Curry’s student Junior Grace Fladung.

“He’s such a great teacher. I hope everyone gets the chance to meet him and get to know him,” Junior Kenzie Donovan said.

Anita Trutwin teaches the Work Experience class and helps her students gain work experience. These students, along with Trutwin, started the boutique.

“I was looking for an entrepreneurship opportunity last year so we put it into work experiences in the community during COVID,” Trutwin said. “This simply became an opportunity where we could practice basic job skills, but it has grown into a community involvement activity where people support what we’re doing. Our students get to expand their base of job skills into problem solving and leadership.”

The students in her class sparked the idea to help Mr. Curry’s family.

“It wasn’t my idea,” Trutwin said. “The students came up with the idea that when we were brainstorming what we can do now with basic soap making. We focused on where to take this idea next and broaden the basic skills we’re learning into something that supports our community.”

Curry is planning to be back at the beginning of next semester in late January after he makes a full recovery.