By Matt Doherty & Ethan Gaffney
Ms. Pelletier, an English loving, charismatic, and welcoming individual, is a well known English teacher here at Westborough High School and has been developing the young minds of WHS students for over a decade.  Ever since Ms. Pelletier was six years old, she had a passion for tea
ching. She would gather her neighborhood friends and play teacher as her young peers would sit and listen. This love for teaching initiated her journey to become the well known English teacher she is today. After graduating high school Ms. Pelletier attended college at The University of New Haven with a double major in English and Business. While working as a business intern and earning a sufficient amount of money, Ms. Pelletier realized that English was her true calling and decided she wanted to switch careers and influence young students by teaching.
Ms. Pelletier earned a job here at WHS, and 14 years later she is in the same room as when she started. Ms. Pelletier is very fond of Westborough, and says she is lucky to teach in such a great town where the kids are engaged in learning, and where she can focus on her teaching instead of discipling kids. Much like Ms. Pelletier’s choice in changing careers, she also gives her students the opportunity to grow and make decisions for themselves.
This school year Ms. Pelletier changed her teaching style and has deserted much of the normal ways of teaching in an English class. Although students still have assigned reading books and assigned essays, much of the work is done through student choice. In the beginning of each week there is a “reading log” that’s due, which tracks the pages read by each student. Unlike an assigned book, where there are a certain number of pages that the whole class has to read, the “reading log” consists of an individual set goal that students have made for themselves with their own chosen books. Students have picked these individual books out of Ms. Pelletier’s class library, which she constructed over the summer to give students choice in the classroom. Ms. Pelletier’s library has hundreds of different books, with an assortment of different genres so students are able to pick books in which they are interested in.
This flexibility of choice in the classroom makes students more open to learn and on top of Mrs. Pelletier’s passion, and love for teaching English, it ultimately makes the classroom environment much more positive, ¨I love the independent aspect of Ms. Pelletier’s classroom and enjoy what she is doing¨ (Kofi Dadzie, Junior, Period 7 English). From a little girl teaching young kids in the neighborhood, to teaching at a privileged high school, much of Ms. Pelletier’s past experiences of choice have influenced her classroom, making young students more prepared for the real world day by day.