Hello, my name is Mr. Shtino.
I grew up in my hometown of Detroit, Michigan and later attended Central Michigan University where I played college hockey and worked for Central Michigan Life, the student newspaper. I came to Northern Burlington after over 10 years in sports marketing. I worked in the product development/marketing department at the Upper Deck Company (Carlsbad, CA) and later, Fleer Trading Cards (Mt. Laurel, NJ). With an Journalism/English degree, teaching had always been a personal goal. I also got better acquainted with the Northern community by coaching (soccer and softball) for 7 years, until the duties of taking my own kids to their practices and games became too much.
I currently split my day between the high school, where I teach Senior Honors English, and the middle school, where I teach ROGATE 7. I truly enjoy the fact that I have such a diverse day, spending my mornings with 12th graders and my afternoons with 7th graders. This diversity has helped energize me and led me to re-examine my teaching methods; this change has been extremely positive for me as it has helped provide me new perspective on how to reach more students.
I believe deeply in nurturing creativity and passion in my students and try to use literature and writing to develop these important skills and traits. I am a strong proponent of collaboration and believe that it is often key to maximizing our creativity. I often ask my students to work together on projects because I find that it this is essential to becoming a productive member of a working society.
I extremely enjoy helping my seniors prepare their college admissions essays as it helps me get to know them better as people, writers and students. At Northern, I am currently actively involved in NBCRTA, Blue-Grey Night and collaborating with my colleagues. I have come to believe that to truly know a community, one must look first to the schools as they are an ongoing sourced of inspiration, energy and knowledge.
At home, I enjoy spending time with my wife, 3 daughters and my dog. We enjoy sports, reading, hiking and camping. The best place to reach me is at mshtino@nburlington.com.
Thank you for your interest in getting to know me.