My MPA Experience Archives

June 13, 2018

What are you currently doing, professionally and/or personally?

Currently I am attending St. Cloud State University, where I am majoring in Elementary Education and minoring in Human Relations. I am a member and captain of the softball team at St. Cloud State. This fall, I will be entering my senior year at St. Cloud State. Over the summer, I am coaching the 12U Silver Bullets softball team, and ironically, MPA student, Siri S. is one of my players.

How did you get there? Are there some career moves or other key experiences or relationships that have inspired you?

Meet Ms. Johnson

April 30, 2018

Middle and Upper School world language teacher

How many years have you been at MPA? 14 years

What do you love about MPA?
Everything! I love the MPA community.

How does MPA nurture students who forever dream big and do right?
By providing them with multiple opportunities in school as well as out of school. i-Term in the Middle School, is a great example.

If you have worked at another school, how has your experience at MPA been different?
What a I truly love about MPA is having all grades PreK-12 on one campus. We all benefit from seeing all age levels on any given day.

What would you tell a parent considering MPA?
This is a great school! Students want to learn and be successful. They are kind and supportive of each other and make great connections with students, teachers, and the community at large.

In what ways are you preparing students for life in the 21st century?
To be thinkers, doers and to have the confidence to go out there and make change in the world.

Is there anything else you’d like to share about your MPA experience?
As an educator, I am constantly being pushed intellectually. I appreciate the support and opportunities to do so, be it through conferences, lectures, classes, traveling, etc.

Meet Teja Upadhyaya ’17

April 19, 2018

What are you currently doing, professionally and/or personally?

I am currently a freshman at the University of Minnesota. In addition to this, I am a 4/C Marine Corps option Midshipmen at the NROTC unit here with a commissioning date of May 2021. After commissioning I will serve as a 2nd LT in the United States Marine Corps

How did you get there? Are there some career moves or other key experiences or relationships that have inspired you?

MPA inspired me to think about the bigger picture and this was the driving force that inspired me to enter military service. Through MPA I learned to love education which is why I decided to go down the officer route.

Meet Kelsey LaValle ’05

April 19, 2018

What are you currently doing, professionally and/or personally?

I’m a stay-at-home mom who is active in volunteering at my kids’ school as well as serving on the Mardag Foundation Board.

How did you get there?

I pursued some programs at St. Paul College (Massage and Esthetics), however I decided that my priority was with my family when I got pregnant and never made it into the field.

How did your MPA experience prepare you for your life today? How did MPA help you dream big and do right?

MPA taught me the value of a good education with caring teachers and how a tight knit community is so important.

What’s next? Any aspirations-personal or professional-that you’d like to share?

I’d like to grow in my position with Mardag and possibly pursue a para position in our school district when all my kids are in school.

Meet Andrew Grant ’15

April 19, 2018

What are you currently doing, professionally and/or personally?

I am currently in my third year at Vanderbilt University, studying Earth & Environmental Science. This past November through January, I was fortunate enough to participate in the United States Antarctic Program. The purpose of our project was to collect ice core from a body of ancient glacial ice that is preserved under a layer of till. Now, I am San Francisco on the first part of a study abroad program looking at the politics of climate change–specifically food, water, and energy. Over the course of my semester with SIT we will be traveling to Vietnam, Morocco, and Bolivia. I am very fortunate.

Meet Greta Stacy ’11

April 12, 2018

What are you currently doing, professionally and/or personally?
I am currently teaching IB Chemistry at Academia Cotopaxi American International School in Quito, Ecuador.

How did you get there? Where did you attend college? Are there some career moves or other key experiences or relationships that have inspired you?
I graduated from Smith College in 2015 with degrees in American studies and chemistry. After Smith, I moved back to Minnesota to pursue my initial license in 9-12 chemistry with the Twin Cities Teacher Collaborative (TC2). This experimental teacher training program provided me with the course work for my license and a yearlong residency experience instead of the traditional student teaching. In this program, I taught at St. Paul Central for one year. Then, I moved to Ecuador and began teaching at Academia Cotopaxi. I completed my MAT through Hamline University this fall, and my final project focused on the integration of the nature of science into the IB chemistry syllabus. I hope to present this research over the summer at the IB World Conference in San Diego. Read More

Meet Mr. Habermann

March 21, 2018

Middle and Upper School music teacher and choir director

How many years have you been at MPA?
Eighteen years as the choir director. I was hired by Barb Bradley to vocal direct and accompany the musicals in 1996. I have been walking MPA halls for nearly half of my life!

What do you love about MPA?
The joy, positivity, passion, and drive exhibited by faculty, staff, and students.

How does MPA nurture students who forever dream big and do right?
We instill in our students the idea of possibility. What can we do now? The world is at your fingertips. Why not dive in and experience all that you can?

If you have worked at another school, how has your experience at MPA been different?
You can be yourself at MPA. Your uniqueness is celebrated. You are important and have something to “bring to the table.” It is like a choir … everyone’s voice is important and we want to hear what you have to say (or sing, in my case!).

What would you tell a parent considering MPA?
You will be jealous of your children’s education!

In what ways are you preparing students for life in the 21st century?
In choir, we are a community. What one person does affects not only you, but the whole. We may be independent thinkers, but we are interdependent beings. Music-making teaches discipline, perseverance, creativity, and the importance of deep listening. Read More

Meet Lesley Kroupa ’97

March 19, 2018

What are you currently doing, professionally and/or personally?
I am currently pursuing a Master of Science in nutrition and public health at Teachers College, Columbia University.

How did you get there? Where did you attend college? Are there some career moves or other key experiences or relationships that have inspired you?
After practicing business law in New York City for 11 years and participating in triathlons and marathons in my spare time, I decided to change careers to pursue my passion for nutrition and fitness. My goal is to combine my legal experience with my nutrition and public health studies to explore ways to promote healthy eating through public policy.

How did your MPA experience prepare you for your life today? How did MPA help you dream big and do right?
As an MPA “lifer” I grew up in the halls of MPA and am continually grateful to the teachers and staff who made it such a thoughtful, empowering, and enriching community. I have no doubt that the lessons from MPA to dream big and do right helped spur my decision to make a career change and pursue a new path.

This story is part of a new series called The Year of 100 Stories, launched by the Mounds Park Academy Alumni Association in January 2018. All alumni are warmly invited to tell their story! Email alumni@moundsparkacademy.org for more information.

Meet Mr. Ethier

February 27, 2018

Middle School math teacher

How many years have you been at MPA? 27

What do you love about Mounds Park Academy?
The students. Every day I get to work with students who are curious, motivated, eager to learn, and willing to do the hard work to solve challenging problems. We talk about the joy of learning, but it’s a joy to work with students like this! As a coach, I get to hear positive things about our students from others they encounter. It might be the neighbor who noticed some of our runners stopping to pick up trash at Goodrich, or the bus driver who always looks forward to driving MPA students because they’re the best.

How does Mounds Park Academy nurture students who forever dream big and do right?
One of the really important things we do is create an environment where students can be themselves. Each student is unique, but each student feels right at home at MPA. Here, it’s cool to be smart, cool to be a math nerd, a drama nerd, a speech nerd, or whatever type of nerd allows you to explore your passion. That welcoming environment is critical to allowing students to have those big dreams and sets an example they can carry on to welcome others.

If you have worked at another school, how has your experience at Mounds Park Academy been different?
I only worked one year at another school—a public school in northern Minnesota. It was like night and day comparing that experience to my experience at MPA. I remember giving a simple problem solving assignment to one of my classes and the students had no idea how to approach it. Nobody had ever asked them to do problems like that before! MPA students jump right in when given those kind of challenges. They’ve been given many opportunities to do open-ended, problem solving, creative activities, and they don’t back down from a challenge.

What would you tell a parent considering Mounds Park Academy?
At MPA, we ask students to solve challenging problems and give them the support they need to be comfortable doing that. Whether it’s solving interesting algebraic problems in sixth grade, writing a novel in seventh grade, doing a research paper in eighth grade, we ask a lot of our students, but we also provide the nurturing environment that helps them feel safe in taking those academic risks. Read More

Meet Rachel Katar ’02

February 22, 2018

Rachel Katar is a member of the Mounds Park Academy Class of 2002.

What are you currently doing, professionally and/or personally?
My husband and I are expecting our first baby in April. I am a middle school science teacher and dorm parent for high schoolers at The Masters School in New York. My favorite part of my job is seeing students set up their own experiments to test ideas and learn more about how the world works.

How did you get there? Where did you attend college? Are there key experiences or relationships that have inspired you?
I took a circuitous route to become a teacher. My mother was a band director in the Roseville schools, my father taught at the University of Minnesota Medical School on occasion, and both my grandmother and my grandfather were teachers. So, naturally, I did not want to become a teacher. When I told my grandmother what I was doing for work though, she replied, “That sounds a lot like teaching to me….” During my college years at Lawrence University and St. Olaf College, I volunteered for Biology Club to teach the water cycle to elementary students. After graduating, I worked at the Science Museum of Minnesota teaching cell biology principles to high school students, so they could in turn teach over 50,000 museum visitors yearly. I then worked at the YMCA of the Greater Twin Cities to manage Youth in Government, Leadership Team, and the Achievers college readiness programs. At Saint Paul Public Schools Community Education, I doubled the science and music class offerings for preschool through high school age students. I even saw Mr. Thompson (MPA faculty member) while planting native plants with students along the Keller Lake shoreline.