Chloe Hoffman, an AP Chemistry, Dual Credit Chemistry, and Integrated Chemistry and Physics teacher, has worked at the high school for 12 years. Hoffman had a unique experience when she got hired and it is something she will never forget.
“I went to college at Purdue, and I went to a career fair in the Northwest Indiana area. Crown Point happened to be hiring. My fiancé at the time, Mr. Hoffman, was working in Whiting, but he went to high school here, so I knew that it was a good school system, and I honestly just got lucky. Mr. Marcinek was the one working the career fair, and he offered me an interview and the rest is history,” Hoffman said.
Hoffman accomplishes many different tasks to be the best teacher she can be. She communicates with students, adults, and parents to ensure her students have the best learning experience possible.
“I have responsibilities of classroom management from day-to-day lesson planning, grading, and communicating with parents and other adults in the building. I have meetings that I have to go to throughout the week. Some of the meetings are with full faculty groups or other positions that I’m in,” Hoffman said. “I’m on the school improvement team, so sometimes I’ll have meetings for that. We have PLC meetings, which are professional learning communities within the subjects that we teach. So I’ll have meetings with the other teachers that teach dual credit chemistry or Integrated Chem/Phys and we talk about things that we can improve for the course or things that we need to make adjustments on.”
Hoffman teaches challenging classes, she enjoys teaching these higher-level classes because she gets deeper connections with her students and she and the students in her class are able to be themselves.
“I love getting to teach some of those upper-level courses because I love being able to have those students who are excited to be smart and nerdy. I was also like that in school, so it’s fun to bond over that kind of thing,” Hoffman said. “I feel like I make a lot of connections with students because of that. I just love whenever kids feel like they can be themselves and that’s probably my favorite part of the job is getting to see them come out of their shell and be themselves.”
Within the classes Hoffman teaches, she is also the coach of the dance team. She coaches dance almost all year and enjoys the competitive aspect of being the dance coach.
“I love competition season because we start in May. We just had tryouts and we end in March, so it’s a long season. Competition season is when we show off all of the hard work and they get kind of like a result for all of that hard work. I love seeing that and kind of seeing how they developed throughout the season as we get to competition. I’m a very competitive person, so I love competition season,” Hoffman said.
Hoffman strives to keep a positive environment in the classroom, works to build deeper connections with her students, attends meetings to help with overall improvement, and coaches the dance team, so she can do something she enjoys.
