After an extensive educational career, English teacher Christine Stiel is saying goodbye to the blue and white. She has been here for about 22 years. She now teaches AP Literature and Composition. 

Stiel began at another high school and was heavily involved in their theater programs and English department, but then went back to school to complete her masters, which put her school involvements at a pause. So when the opportunity came up to work at RB, she decided to go for it. 

“I liked being back in the high school classroom.  So I stayed!  I continued to do freelance work and some theater reviews, but once I started teaching AP Lit and Comp, there was no extra time left for other writing,” Stiel said. 

The COVID-19 pandemic did not affect her decision to leave. After so many years of teaching, she is always prepared for new situations. Stiel believes that remote learning has taught us to keep evolving and that students should embrace every skill that they learned through it. 

“I embraced the remote style–its benefits and struggles — and tried to continue growing my pedagogy as a teacher during it… We, students and teachers, are survivors of a pandemic.  And how we spent our time during the pandemic is important.  I tell my students not to discount the skills they did develop during this time.  Challenges like this are always an opportunity to meet it and do things a different way,” Stiel said. 

Post-RB, Stiel hopes to work on more creative projects, and even though she is retiring, she will attack it with the same energy she did teaching. Likewise, she wants to go back to her art roots and is going to be visiting museums. Stiel also plans on furthering her own education by pursuing another degree. 

One of Stiel’s favorite things about teaching high school is seeing life from a student’s perspective. She likes to learn about how they speak to each other; she awes at the ever-changing language that teenagers speak.

Along with that, Stiel explains that she will miss her fellow teachers the most and the resources that belong to them. 

“I’ll miss the perks of being a teacher member of a professional organization,” Stiel said