By Shane Bliss

Most college classes don’t start out with a toga party. But that was the way Dr. Eric Stennett was greeted in a surprise from his students, on the last day of class.

He fought the urge to visibly break out laughing, burying his face in his hands as his students marched into the room in bed sheets styled as togas.

Despite the fun atmosphere, Stennett’s role as a professor at Point Park is very important. As all education majors do, they will spend their last semester teaching in a real school. It is his role to get them prepared for that in their final classes.

“The way to prepare students is to really give them practical experience,” Stennett said. “It has to be relevant to what teaching is today.”

Two of his students, Megan Moore and Dan Hudak, both say those methods have prepared them to be ready for teaching.

“Dr. Stennett takes what we learn in our text and applies it to real world scenarios that we’ll probably experience in our future classrooms,” Hudak said. “Every class I feel more and more confident that I can be a successful teacher.”

“He makes it real to life,” Moore said. “I just really like him.”

Stennett said the best part of being a part of the Point Park community is “absolutely helping students succeed.” But in addition to that, the faculty and staff at Point Park has made his time here an enjoyable experience.

“I really do like the faculty,” Stennett said. “Point Park is unique in the sense that it’s like a family.”

In addition to his teaching duties, Stennett also serves as the principal of Hampton Middle School. Serving at that job has shown him some of the challenges involved with working in education, but also how rewarding working in this field can be.

“I think it’s dealing with children who are suffering, whether academically or personally,” Stennett said. “It’s really difficult to do when there’s not a lot of support and you’re trying to keep children above water. Some of the most rewarding experiences are helping children succeed.”

Carrying both of those jobs at once does take up a lot of time, but he has the support at home to make all of this possible.

“Most importantly, you have to have a loving, caring spouse, who understands that you can’t be home,” Stennett said. “And when you’re home, you need to be home. I don’t have many hobbies outside of my kids.”

He does indeed make time for his children, even with all of this work. After his final class last Tuesday evening, he was going straight to the Penguin game for his daughter’s birthday.

Stennett was not originally going to pursue education as a career. He was a geology and chemistry major when his advisor got him a job as a teaching assistant. From there, it led him down to path to becoming a teacher, and later a principal. When working as a teacher, he taught life and earth science in the eighth grade.

He still feels an equal love for both teaching and being a principal, and would not be able to choose one over the other. It would be choosing which child he preferred, he said.

Overall, his time working in different jobs in education has shown him what the power of teaching can really be.

“It’s one of those things where, if you’re in the business world, you make a product, but children aren’t products,” Stennett said. “If you can make a change in at least one child’s life, that’s the reward.”