By Healthy Panther Post reporters | Picking up trash in the hallways. Keeping doors locked. Going to gym class. Like the students they teach today, MaST Community Charter School teachers found ways to stay healthy and keep their schools safe when they were in middle school.

Healthy Panther Post spoke with Mr. Costanzo, lead seventh-grade social studies teacher, and Mrs. Miller, who is a Response to Intervention teacher, about their school experiences.

Mr. Costanzo, who attended St. Matthew’s School (a private Catholic school in Philadelphia) said there were many ways his school made him feel safe. One example is that doors were locked at all times and visitors had to report to the main office before being able to enter the classrooms.

To help the school environment, he and his friends worked together and emptied trash from the classrooms and hallways.

Mrs. Miller, who attended three elementary schools—Sheridan, Hacket, and Richmond, all located in Philadelphia—said the schools did a lot to help students and staff stay healthy and feel safe.

At Richmond, for example, Mrs. Miller recalled that she felt safe because of hallway monitors and adults in the hallways. For her part, Mrs. Miller helped keep her school clean by picking up trash and throwing it away. She also would let an adult know if someone was being mistreated.

Mr. Costanzo remembered that his school promoted healthy behaviors by holding gym class all year, not just for a semester.

“That was a way for students to stay fit and in shape all year round,” he said. Recess every day after lunch was a great help as well.

Being on the basketball team “was a great experience during my middle school days,” Mr. Costanzo said, explaining another way he kept in shape. His team even finished as state runners-up his eighth-grade year.

Mr. Costanzo also talked about the choices students were allowed to make about their courses.

“There was a lot of freedom in my middle school days,” he said, explaining that students were allowed to pick an elective course when he was in eighth grade. Mr. Costanzo picked stocks as his topic for his class.

Toward the end of the interview, he showed us his seventh-grade English Language Arts copybook. It was filled with many interesting things. We could tell that he loved to draw, as almost every page was very colorful and filled with doodles. We learned a lot about him, and that he is a person who will do anything to keep his environment a safe place.

Illustration by Liliana, eighth grade, Catholic Partnership Schools, 2023–24.