Fittingly, it takes a trip back in time to discover why Portage High School teacher Cathy Nye chose to dedicate her professional life to teaching history. As a child, Nye’s family vacations consisted of going to battlefields and museums, where she developed a passion and affinity for history.
“When you’re there, on the same ground that these people were doing what they did, you see it,” she said. “It was never dry, dusty books to me, it was real. Sometimes we try to bring that into the classroom.”
When the bell rings at 2:35 to dismiss students from 10th hour, Nye’s day is usually far from over. She serves as the adviser of the school’s most prestigious organization, National Honor Society, in addition to coaching the social studies academic team and Quiz Bowl.
As NHS adviser, Nye is in charge of coordinating and overseeing all events put on by the organization, which is dedicated to community service and helping others. However, she said she attempts to put as much responsibility as possible on the students to make it a truly student-run group.
“I like to make this a student organization, where the members are the ones putting everything together, but I’m the one helping make that happen,” Nye said. “It gives me an opportunity to get to know the kids outside of the classroom, which is really where you get to know the kids. You develop relationships with them and let them see that you really do care about them.”
Quiz Bowl is a jeopardy-style, buzz in competition that tests the students’ random trivial knowledge. Academic Super Bowl has one general topic for all subject areas. This year’s topic is Ancient Greece.
Nye, who is in her fourth year at PHS, took a long road to her current post teaching juniors’ A.P. U.S. History. She grew up in Ohio, where she graduated from Loveland High School and Miami University in Oxford. Nye was ranked third academically in her high school graduating class.
By attending Miami University, she continued a long standing family tradition. She is a third generation RedHawk on one side of the family and fourth generation on the other side. Both her parents, three out of four grandparents and five out of six sets of aunts and uncles all attended Miami.
She finished her history major by her sophomore year, and eventually added both comparative religion and Jewish studies to her degree. After one year working with the Campus Crusade for Christ at Ball State, Nye found herself back at Miami University to work toward her master’s and teaching certificate.
Nye’s teaching career started with a three year stint teaching juniors’ U.S. History in North Carolina, before she took a job at PHS in order to return to the Midwest and be closer to home. She said she is “very much enjoying” her tenure in Portage.
“Last year was one of my best year’s teaching ever and this year is shaping up to be more of the same,” she said. “That gives you an idea that I’m sticking around, I’m not going anywhere.”
Nye’s passion for history is evident both inside and outside the classroom. She participates in Civil War Reenactments, another Nye family affair that also involves her father and brother. She has been participating in reenactments with a group based out of Cincinnati for about 10 years.
“It is just something fun to do where you can camp out and wear a pretty dress and feel pretty all day,” Nye said. “People are nice and have manners back in the 1800s.”
Nye also loves to travel and is closing in on her goal of visiting all 50 states with just the New England area, the northwest corner and Alaska remaining.
When asked for her favorite person in history, Nye had difficulty making up her mind between George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
“Lincoln had kind of a common sense approach to everything and understood the necessity of bringing in different sides with different opinions,” she said. “With Washington, I just really respect the fact that he had the opportunity to take all of the power he wanted, but instead he just handed it back. A lot of presidents lose a little bit of their shine as more light is shed on them, but those two have stood up to the scrutiny of today.”
Inside the classroom, Nye tries to be fairly laid back and conversational since she instructs a college level course.
“The biggest thing you have to do is you have to care about your kids,” she said. “You also really have to know your stuff. If you don’t know what you’re talking about, the kids are going to pick up on that pretty quickly. I really like the people I work with. I enjoy my students.”