All School

August 25, 2022

What position will you be holding at MPA?
College Counselor

From what school/organization are you coming? 
St. Paul’s Schools, Brooklandville, MD

Tell us about your education and past experience. 
I have been working in education for a year as an English teaching assistant in Austria in 2010. After finishing graduate school at Georgetown, I taught German and global politics at the St. Paul’s Schools near Baltimore, where I also served on the college counseling team. I just wrapped up my first summer co-directing Waldsee, the German summer camp at the Concordia Language Villages in Bemidji where I have taught since 2005.

What did you find appealing about MPA?
I was struck by the earnest curiosity of the students I met at MPA; they seemed intrinsically motivated by their own desire to learn and grow, rather than by external markers of success.

What’s your big dream?
At the moment, I’m most excited to connect (and reconnect) to communities I was isolated from throughout the pandemic, and to help students do the same.

What are you (and your family, if you so choose) passionate about?
Singing fills the gaps in my soul. I joined a choir when I first moved to DC in 2011 (before even finding an apartment), and that community has been the one constant in my life through a decade of moves, grad school, teaching, and job hunting. I hope to find a similar musical avenue in MN!

What’s a fun fact about you that our community would love to know?
I can fold just about any origami creature out of one square of paper, given detailed instructions. (Hedgehogs are my white whales, so to speak–too many spines–but almost any other animal is fair game.)

August 23, 2022

What position will you be holding at MPA?
10th Grade Western Literature Long Term Substitute

From what school/organization are you coming?
Community of Peace Academy

Tell us about your education and past experience.
I attended the Johnston Center for Integrative Studies at the University of Redlands for my undergraduate. The Johnston Center was a program that allowed students to design their own majors and craft courses to meet their specific interests. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Giving The Past A Voice: Bringing the Ancient World To Life In A Modern Classroom. I then attended Pepperdine Graduate School of Education and Psychology where I got my master’s in Education and a teaching credential in English and Social Studies. I have spent the past five years teaching middle school Social Studies and middle/high school English. I most recently taught 10th grade World Literature.

What did you find appealing about MPA? 
What I find so appealing about working at MPA is getting to be part of this wonderful community. I attended a school very similar to MPA, and what I loved about my school was the strong sense of community. Teachers wanted us to not only succeed in our academic lives, but they also wanted us to thrive in our personal lives too. They pushed us to be the best version of ourselves inside and outside of school. I see this same sense of community and support at MPA. MPA is a school where everyone cares deeply about the quality of the education and that the students have every opportunity to thrive. In the past five years, I have taught at various schools in the area, and I can say I have found none like MPA. I am excited to be part of this special place.

What’s your big dream?
I want my students to find success in whatever form that means to them.

What are you (and your family, if you so choose) passionate about? 
If I had to pick something in our lives that my family is passionate about it would have to be exploration. Exploration is so important to us that my husband and I actually named our son Odysseus (we call him Odys for short). Our journeys have taken us from attending weddings in India and Colombia to hiking in Switzerland and New Zealand. We also love to explore locally. We are members of the State Park Passport Club and Hiking Club. So far we have racked up over 150 miles hiked in the state parks and have visited just over half the parks. Now that Odys is two, he has also started to explore the world. While our adventures aren’t taking us too far, I am finding new places every day with Odys that I wouldn’t have seen before. I can’t wait to see where we go next.

What’s a fun fact about you that our community would love to know?
I was once bitten by an anaconda.

August 16, 2022

What position will you be holding at MPA?
Part-time Upper School English Teacher

From what school/organization are you coming?
Rosemount High School

Tell us about your education and past experience.
I taught in Chicago for six years before relocating to Minnesota for my partner’s job, and I taught for five years in District 196 at Rosemount High School. My undergraduate degrees are in English and French from St. Olaf College, and my M.A. is in Rhetoric and Composition from DePaul University.

What did you find appealing about MPA?
The pairing of intellectual ambition and global responsibility appeals to my sense of idealism. What is our responsibility to ourselves and others as we become better readers, writers, and thinkers? I’m excited to see what this looks like in the classroom.

What’s your big dream?
Chasing curiosity–staying thirsty for knowledge and connection.

What are you (and your family, if you so choose) passionate about?
I’m passionate about going on adventures. This might look like family adventures (road trips, camping trips, day trips) or intellectual adventures (reading a challenging book, taking a new job) or physical adventures (running challenging races, joining a new workout class).

What’s a fun fact about you that our community would love to know?
I make my kids’ birthday cakes every year from scratch.