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March 11, 2025
For Humanities Teacher Beth Little, the classroom is just the first of many ways to connect with her students.
BY JODY RECORD
In part, Beth Little has her 4-year-old son to thank for feeling so connected to the community that exists at St. Paul’s School. The little boy is obsessed with the School’s hockey teams, Little says, providing one more way she has come to know students aside from teaching Humanities 3 — the interdisciplinary course required of all Third Formers that brings together the study of English, history, religion and philosophy— and creative writing. She is also head of house in Conover Twenty.
“There might be some students that I have in the dorm and teach in class but it’s more common to get to know them in different ways. I have 39 kids in my dorm; some are on the crew team, which I coach. I teach a few of them but it’s also being out and about in the community,” says Little, who also serves as an adviser for the Asian Society affinity group. “And having a 4-year-old who knows all the names of the hockey players adds another element to a very full experience. It’s all part of why I feel part of the St. Paul’s community.”
“I’m interested in what [my students are] thinking. I try to be open to where they are and use everything we do in class to help them understand themselves and their place in world.”
Humanities Teacher Beth Little
Humanities is another way Little contributes to community at the School. The focus of the Third Form course is on helping students further understand and think about what it means to be human. Little adds that her approach to teaching is to make her classes student-centered.
“I’m interested in what they’re thinking. I try to be open to where they are and use everything we do in class to help them understand themselves and their place in world,” she says of her Humanities 3 students. “I hope it helps them get to know themselves better.” In her creative writing classroom, Little says, it’s about continuing their learning. “No one creative writing class is the same.”
Little has been working on a novel for several years and has published several short stories for young adults. Between teaching, coaching, advising and raising her 4-year-old on the SPS grounds (Little and her husband also have three older children, one in college and two who are boarding school teachers themselves), it’s hard to imagine she has time for her own writing, but she says she asks the same thing of herself that she does her students: set goals; find the time. During National Writing Month in November, when writers are encouraged to try to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days, Little says she set a goal of writing one sentence a day.
She notes that students learn most about themselves through their writing journey, going from uncomfortable to interested and excited in their work. “To see them putting themselves out there is really fun and rewarding,” she says.
Little, who joined St. Paul’s School in 2019, was a boarding school student herself. She attended Tabor Academy in Marion, Mass. “As a student, it was the best experience I could have imagined,” she says. “I felt seen and known by teachers, coaches, around the dorms. It was really a wonderful experience.”
Presciently wonderful, even. Before she graduated from Tabor, Little was voted most likely to return to boarding school to teach.
