Wingspan has been sitting down with new faculty and getting to know them. Up next, Carla Falick is a new English 1 teacher who is new to the district as well as the school.

Wingspan: You’re new to the district as well as the school, correct?

Falick: “Yes, I taught for 17 years in south Florida where I taught English and I was the newspaper adviser (journalism teacher) and I also did some year book and some television production.”

Wingspan: What made you decide to move to Texas?

Falick: “My husband works for State Farm and they relocated everybody out here and we had a choice of Atlanta, Dallas, or Phoenix and we were going to go to Phoenix and then at the last minute they made him a better offer in Dallas. My daughters were going into 5th and going into 8th and they were not happy.”

Wingspan: I can’t imagine.

Falick: “Yeah they still, I mean you know we miss Florida very much. That’s where all our family is and it’s hard during the holidays but I took a very lengthy amount of time off from teaching to raise my kids. We moved from south Florida to north Florida because of my husbands work. You know we were moving and there just never seemed like a good time to go back but I missed it very much. Initially when I went to come back here I was looking at journalism or yearbook positions but the certifications are different between Texas and Florida so I would have to update a lot of my stuff and obviously the technology and stuff but it’s something that’s still in the back of my mind down the road but i’ve always taught both English and journalism.”

Wingspan: What would you say has been the hardest thing to overcome working at a new district?

Falick: “Well just Frisco as a district itself they do a lot of really exciting things and it’s all great it’s just it’s almost like starting over just because the standards are different plus the time that has gone by so it’s not really necessarily just being new to Frisco as much as it is just not having been in the classroom for a few years but slowly but surely it’s all coming back to me but you know it’s a big school and I don’t really know any faculty. I have just met a few teachers here within my hallway and in my department and everybody’s been very nice and just getting to know people. I’m pretty familiar with the students because my daughters, I have two daughters that are at Wakeland so I am kinda familiar with the Frisco ISD because I live in the Frisco ISD so I know what goes on in the schools so that was another reason I wanted to come back because I feel like it’s a great place to be a teacher.”

Wingspan: We did some research and discovered you are also a real estate agent as well as a teacher?

Falick: “Real estate has always been a family business. My father owned several real estate companies. He was a broker and my sister then took over we kind of took over the business to keep it going after he passed away. I did it in Florida so when I came here my sister kind of pressured me to get licenced and I did. I’ve been doing it for 3 or 4 years but I mean i’m still licenced and can help a friend here and there but i’m not active in terms of out there. You know there is no way I could do that job and this job because it’s time consuming but i’m always available to help. Good research, good job.”

Wingspan: You have been a teacher for about 17 years.

Falick: “I taught for about 17 then I took some time off so this is my 18th year teaching.”

Wingspan: What would you say has been the best thing you have learned about teaching over the years?

Falick: “I mean I really think just learning how to get the information across to the students in a way that they can process it you know and really be successful in what they do. That’s the fun for me in it is to see them doing well. I like teenagers, I always related to them pretty well so I like working with that age group as opposed to working with adults. I don’t know what that says about me but… so yeah I just really enjoy helping the students reach their goals.”

Wingspan: What would you say to students who are worried about your classes this year?

Falick: “Because they are worried about the level of difficulty?”

Wingspan: Yes.

Falick: “Well I would say that I am always available to help so no matter how difficult something is that you’re doing I am always here to help you with it. I am here during advisory, I do morning and afternoon tutorials during the week so I would say that I don’t really feel like a corse is difficult if the teacher is there to be supportive. I think that helps a lot so I just try and do that.”

Wingspan: It’s nice to have a teacher who is willing to talk with you during advisory.

Falick: “I definitely like it. When I taught journalism we had a big classroom I haven’t been over to see the journalism room yet. I pass by it. Ms. Babineaux who is the yearbook teacher actually knows people from Florida. The same publishing company that they use here, it used to be called Taylor now it’s called Balfour, that’s who my school worked with so all those reps and the plant where they produce it is in Dallas so years and years ago I flew out here to see the plant and it’s just funny because she, Ms. Babineaux has been doing it forever and it’s just funny that she knows a lot of the same people from Florida and that was kind of a cool thing like there are 2 teachers here that actually taught in the same district I taught in south Florida.”

Wingspan: Did that help you kind of settle in a little more?

Falick: “Yeah you know it was nice to see familiar faces. Anyway I really think scholastic journalism has come a long way since I taught but we had this room and I had an office in the room and the students were always coming in during lunches to work and we were there late hours after school like I’m sure you will be doing but there was just a lot of time like I had students who I had for four years like from Journalism 1 up through Journalism 4 and we traveled and we went to competitions together all over the United States and so that just changes your relationship you know you spend a lot of time with your students and you just get to know each other and I’m still in touch with so many of them on Facebook and they have gone on to do such great things. Just this past Christmas I was out in California and one of my TV production students is a producer at NBC so he took me and my daughters and some friends, and you can’t normally tour the lot there, but we got to sit in on a live news cast. My daughters and their friends got to do a weather report with the actual stuff which was really cool and then we got to tour the whole lot and see all the sets and meet some of the actors and actresses. That was really exciting. A lot of them I mean I have some that are editors for Sports Illustrated, I’ve got two former students that are editors of the Times. They have just all gone on to do such great things and it’s really nice when they say to me like thank you for getting me interested in journalism because when they start out in Journalism 1 they are kind of just taking it as an academic elective and then just funneling them from there into either yearbook or newspaper and then once we started getting TV 1 classes so they go in there thinking oh this is just going to be an elective and then it turns out being their career that they choose. A lot of them are doing really well. Like some of them when I was thinking about going to work I was thinking about going back to just journalism and not teaching although that industry has changed so much now but I was thinking geez I might have to be asking one of them for a job. So that would have been weird but yeah that’s the best part of it is the relationship with the students.”