Faculty Spotlight: Joy Norkin

College/ Degrees: University of Maine-Orono, B.A. 

Years of service: 22 at Fryeburg Academy

Subject(s): English, Environmental Science, and Biology; May Term classes like Archery, New England Ecology, and You Alone in the Maine Woods

Other roles at FA: Dorm parent (currently in Payson-Mulford), dorm team member, student council advisor, cheerleading coach when called upon, despite knowing little about the sport, but still helped seniors complete their four years! 

Fun fact:  When becoming a Registered Maine Guide many moons ago, there was a particular area on a map within which Ms. Norkin had to prove her orienteering skills.  In her first year teaching at FA, she found a map of the same area stashed in a classroom and took it as a sign she had landed in the right place to plant roots!

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Background: Ms. Norkin grew up in York, Maine.  At UMaine, she was in a sorority, participated in the Air Force ROTC through UNH, and trained to become an EMT (later a wilderness EMT with local SOLO), which is how she landed in the Mount Washington Valley.  She also earned an associate's degree in Nursing.  Ms. Norkin has three children who graduated from FA and two more who will be here soon.  

Why did you become a teacher?

I spent summers as a camper and later as a camp counselor, when I discovered how much I enjoyed helping people learn.  While in ROTC, I expressed interest in becoming a flight nurse, and I was advised to pursue an aviation career.  I wasn’t interested in going in that direction, but it did help me turn more toward teaching.

What is your favorite class to teach and why?

For a few years, I taught a double-period class that combined English and Biology.  It coupled my love of literature and science.  Everything is connected in a meaningful way.

Memorable classroom moment?

There have been so many over the years.  I love witnessing random acts of kindness between students.  I loved ringing the bell with a student last week when she got into college - the first in her family to do so.  I also love when a student has an “a-ha” moment like my Biology students did today.  We had been studying diffusion.  I told them we were going to walk to a room where holiday wreaths were being made.  I asked them to think about why I was taking them there, and as soon as they walked through the door and smelled the balsam fir, they shouted “diffusion!”  

How would your students describe you as a teacher? 

Just recently, a class told me that I am hard but fair, that I make things interesting, and that they walk away from my class having learned something.

Is there anything from your experience as a student or parent that has influenced you as a teacher?

Everything.  Literally everything.

What are some of your favorite books?

The Ashley Book of Knots & my old JMG The Art of Outdoor Living 

Advice for students?

As Plonius says in Hamlet, “To thine own self be true” and  Thoreau’s Walden wisdom, “I went to the woods because I wish to live deliberately, to front only the essential fact of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discovered I had not lived.”