Mr. Miller Moves On

Jim Miller has put a lifetime into education in Winona.

Miller has taught for forty five years in the Winona area, the last nine of those years have been spent teaching English 11 at Cotter.

Miller went into teaching because he was fascinated by the way and style of how authors wrote and expressed their ideas , but his true passion is working with students.

“They’re always unique, they’re always different. You cannot help but improve your own writing and language skills by working with students because you’re constantly reading their writing, you’re sharing their ideas, they’re like your own peer reviews,”  Miller said.

Miller believes that English class needs a great responsibility put into it because English is used in all classes and skills.  “In order to do well in all disciplines, you have to do well in reading and writing.”

Mr. Miller attended Cotter as a high school student and then stayed in Winona, going to college at what was then St. Mary’s College and majoring in English and education.

“I had, several, really good teachers that inspired me to look at the profession of teaching. One of them, ironically, being Mr. Costello’s father. I took five classes from him, and what I really enjoyed was just listening to him and how he seemed to enjoy everything that he read.”

Mr. Miller began his teaching career as an English teacher for seventh and eighth grade students at the Winona Middle School, until Dr. Cal Hopf, the superintendent at the time, approached him and highly encouraged him to take the high school teaching job at the Winona Senior High School.

Miller taught basic composition and literature, as well as AP English at WSHS.

“I was always proud that I started the AP English program at Winona Senior High, and ironically a good number of my students when I started AP in the early 80’s were students from Cotter.” Miller also enjoyed teaching electives, his favorite elective being mythology, specifically Egyptian, Roman, and Greek mythology.

Moving forward in time, after retiring from the Winona Senior High School after 36 years, Mr. Miller received a phone call from Mr. Junker,the Cotter principal at the time, and was offered an English job at Cotter.

Miller accepted the job because he missed his passion of teaching, “I realized maybe I wasn’t done… Sometimes I would go to a bookstore and see Hamlet, or a copy of Gatsby, and realize I missed teaching that. It was hitting me that I was missing something that I didn’t realize that I missed.”

Miller also felt his need to teach English because “..students are still students…no matter the technology. Writing is still writing.” As he taught at Cotter, he appreciated the diversity that Cotter has provided. He also believes in building a strong teacher-student relationship. He asks about how the game went yesterday or a simple hello works, as long as a connection is formed and the individuality of the student is discovered.

Mr. Miller’s legacy is not only built around teaching English class. Miller also participated in coaching girls golf at the Senior High, He coached golf for many years and was a coach for one of the teachers that is currently teaching here at Cotter right at the moment, Mrs. Conway.

In his free time, besides reading and educating himself, he goes antiquing with his wife. “I’ve always kind of collected things related to my teaching career, or whatever I could find… I guess I got into it because of literature and the arts.”

When asked if he was going to try anything new, Miller says “I’ve always wanted to teach a college class in English, There’s always a chance for adjunct classes at Winona State or St. Marys.”

On the topic of teaching for Miller: “The big thing [teaching at Cotter] is that it was really perfect for me in a way… I found that what I could do in part time, I couldn’t do in full time.”

Mr. Miller says what he is going to miss the most is “To me the heart of the teaching process is the interaction of student and teacher, and I suppose it is for a coach, all those kinds of things. The actual teaching and coaching part.”

One of his favored features as teacher that current students and past students admired from Mr. Miller is his use of puns and having fun with the use of the English Language. “I love to have fun with language, and you know English and Writing is a serious subject, but you can’t be serious all the time. I just think it’s fun to lighten up, and sometimes something is said and it just strikes a chord. I’ve always felt that one of the real successes in teaching is a sense of humor. Just, have fun with it”

Mr. Miller made a strong impression on colleagues and students.

Crossing off the final assignments

“He is a great person to work with, he’s super nice, very realistic and sees it like it is, very experienced, trusting, organized, and if I need a quick lesson plan he will go to his file cabinet and pull something out for me, lastly he is very resourceful.” says fellow English teacher Emily Shriver. “He always makes me smile and he cheers me up on days that aren’t going so well.”

Here’s what a few of his students have to say about Mr. Miller:

“Mr. Miller is an enthusiastic teacher with a passion for his work. He has a talent for identifying connections between diverse topics and helping students discover them as well. Puns are his specialty, and his love of literature is inspiring, ” junior Sammi Knight said

“Mr Miller was a great teacher . The notes he wrote to his students and the treats he brought to class were really good at encouragement for students,” Thomas Row added.

“Mr. Miller helped me develop interests in reading books in English. He is the best.” Ruxin Qiao Yang said.

“He was an awesome teacher and he was really understanding and easy going, ”  Jacob Tlougan concurred.

Even though Ernest Hemingway  says “Retirement is the ugliest word in the language,” everyone here is confident that your accomplishments are far from over.

“..boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”