She waits in her office, overjoyed by the memories that come flooding in. her looks proves it all. Her shiny white teeth to go with the big smile. Her hand movements flutter around like butterflies as she speaks about the moments she had in highschool. She’s ready to tell a story.
Mrs. Kaiden, a West leyden colab english teacher, is the kindest english teacher you’ll meet. She’s truly interested in the growth of her students and won’t back down until she knows you’re doing fine on your own. She’s a teacher many students feel comfortable talking to.
She always had a positive outlook on ideas. even in highschool. “high school was awesome.” she said while showing her big smile, “I tried to have fun, just kind of get to know who I was and meet new people and sports and attend different events.” Her highschool days are what eventually altered her to become an english teacher. “Yes, so I always knew I wanted to be a teacher. For a while, I didn’t know if I wanted to teach little kids or high school or junior high. and I quickly learned I wanted to teach high school students. I’m gonna do high school, I don’t know what I want to teach, but then in high school, I figured out I wanted to teach English just sounded really cool and actually, Mr. Giordano had the same teacher as I did. Miss French. She was the coolest English teacher, so I think she really inspired me to be a high school English teacher.”
But this meant that she had a lot more school ahead of her. She knew she was going to face some challenges but at the same time, those challenges shaped her into becoming the person she is now. “So I wasn’t ready to go away to school yet. When I graduated high school, I went to Trinity for two years, got my associate’s degree, and then I went to Illinois State for two years. I loved it. It was a way for me to grow up as a, you know, young person. And it was really a great experience. I think I needed that to become a better adult, you know, like I couldn’t stay at home my whole life, yeah, and go to school at home. I needed to go away even if it was just for the two years that I went. So, yeah, my master’s degree was through Northeastern and it took me so long because I coached the wide nets dance team, and that season is summer, fall and winter. So then having practice and then going to class at night was a lot, so I tried to, like space out classes. So that’s why it took me so long.” she was grateful for these experiences as she said, “I think just being able to, like, make my own decisions, living on my own, manage my own money, manage my time, manage how I’m going to organize all my classes, how I’m going to schedule my classes. Just those skills were what I needed to become an adult, for sure.”
And with all this newly built character development, she was finally off to teach her first year in high school. “It was very fun. I was intimidated, I had juniors my first year. I taught in English one honors” she said with a nervous expression on her face. she never saw herself fit in. she felt “misplaced”. until she found a colab. Her relieved expression took over now that she was talking about colab. “It’s so hard sometimes to teach kids the way I wanted to, in four walls, confined to one classroom. When I taught English three, I didn’t have the history behind all the speeches and different pieces of literature I needed to teach. So I don’t know if I should take a history class on this stuff. I don’t have enough to give. So it works out great that now I get to teach with Lang (Global study colab teacher) so anything that I do, he can provide historical background, like when you learn religions last year, right? I can do my stuff so that he can provide the social studies perspective. So cool to kind of see education as more interdisciplinary. it’s not just so segmented, it’s kind of a whole new thing, never had that before.”
Mrs. Kaiden will continue to do her best when helping students grow. Her enthusiasm for her career really shows when you hear the passion she puts for each lecture. She will always be there when in need of advice, or just someone to talk to. look for her bright smile and you’ll know you’ve found her
