Author Spotlight
Will Clough
We spend 35 hours a week with our teachers. They are with us nearly every day of the week and often know us better than we think. But sometimes, we forget how little we know about them.
It’s easy to forget that it was your third hour English teacher who was the lead singer in the most popular band in school. We never stop to think that they might have had it just as rough as we do, and that maybe they are real human beings, just like we are.
Each teacher at East has a different story that highlights their experiences and explains who they are today. These stories are the things that made them unique back when they were teenagers and that still help to define them today. Whether it was playing on the school basketball team, or simply spending time with friends, each of our teachers has their own story to tell. A story that sounds similar to one that we are all know too well – our own.
Just like us, our teachers can remember cramming for the big math test, or staying up all night to wait for the new big movie to come out. They know which teachers they liked and which ones they hated, and most importantly, they know what their passions were.
Every one of us loves to do something different, and teachers are no exception. They worked hard, but also enjoyed the time they had and appreciated their high school experience.
Life was just a glance at the schedule: A volleyball game tonight, two essays to write and a fundraiser to organize. That was high school for art teacher Jodie Schnakenberg. Walk into room 205 today and you’ll find “Schnaks” in her element: there’s some funky music playing in the background and her bright blue hair is swishing back and forth. But she had a different style during high school. In a small town in Minnesota, Schnakenberg was a hardworking student, who rarely had time to sit back and relax. She juggled three sports, played in a band and was involved in several extracurricular activities, all while trying to maintain a 4.0 GPA.
“You know, I was a super-duper freakout overachiever.” Schnakenberg said. “That was kinda scary, looking back on it.”
She was a competitive student and always wanted to be her best; this meant always being ready to take on another activity and invest herself into something new. Needless to say, Schnakenberg felt overwhelmed.
“I was so done with school I could not express it in words,” Schnakenberg said. “And I think it was because I was an overachiever. I was burnt out.”
After working tirelessly throughout her high school and college years, Schnakenberg was ready for a shift in perspective. Endless nights worrying about her GPA had taken a toll. She needed a chance to breathe. But after taking a small break, she found herself back in the very place that had given her so much stress: she knew a teaching degree was what she needed.
“I did massage therapy for like eight years, and I was trying to find my way through my life and then I decided ‘man I gotta go back and do this,’” Schnakenberg said.
High school was the place where she had been the happiest. Even though Schnakenberg felt like there was never enough time in the day, she doesn’t remember school being a bad thing. Each meeting she went to or game she played in was just another way to experience something new and do something she really enjoyed. She didn’t mind spending hours after school because she knew how to make them enjoyable.
“I loved high school. I thought my high school experience was something that I never look back and never have mixed feelings or bad feelings about,” Schnakenberg said
After taking a small break to figure herself out, she found herself back in the place she loved, but this time playing a different role. It was somewhere where she could be surrounded by people she understood and loved to work with. It was somewhere where she really knew how to enjoy herself.
Fluorescent lights and white-tiled hallways. Blue door frames and an endless row of locker banks. It’s nothing new for English teacher Laura Beachy Langdon. Beachy Langdon has been walking these hallways for years and has come to call them home. It was the fall of 1991 when she nervously walked into East her freshman year. Almost 25 years later, Beachy Langdon walks into that same building every day, but now feels a little more confident and a little more at home.
Beachy Langdon looks down the hallways of East and remembers everything great: the years spent helping out with school fundraisers, or the memories made on the girls’ golf team. Most importantly, she remembers the choir.
“Senior year I was in Chamber Singers, which was probably the best thing – well not probably, I would say almost certainly the best activity I did in all of high school,” Beachy Langdon said.
She was involved in choir all four years at East, and made Chamber singers her senior year. For Beachy Langdon, Chambers was an opportunity to step out of her comfort zone and experience a different group of people. She normally considered herself a “goodie goodie” and a hard-working student, but when it came to Chambers, she got to be one of the “cool kids.”
“In Chambers, there was all sorts of people that I would not normally choose as friends because frankly it was just a really different crowd, but every time we were in class or every time we got together outside of school, we got along – it was a family,” Beachy Langdon said.
Beachy Langdon still frequents the East choir concerts and carries those fond memories with her. The Christmas lights strung up in her classroom add something unique and show how she truly finds this place to be home. She laughs as she flips through the purple 1995 Hauberk and comes across the picture where she is standing in the front left corner – her usual spot. Beachy Langdon can still point out her picture in this year’s copy of the yearbook, but now she is standing in a different spot, and is happy to be a part of it.
It was the little things that made high school what it was for social studies teacher Steve Klein. Hanging out with a few friends or playing a quick pickup game after school; that’s all it took for him to appreciate his high school experience. A former student at Shawnee Mission South, Klein remembers his high school experience as being a great opportunity to spend time with friends and to figure out his interests and passions. One of the best places he could do this was in his front yard.
Klein appreciated being a teenager and to be surrounded by such good friends in his neighborhood. He was able to enjoy himself and can still remember putting on special events in his driveway each year.
“We would get groups of two-on-two tournaments and we donated the proceeds, and so I hosted a big tournament with my friends for that purpose,” Klein said.
He played on the school basketball team and coached another high school team his senior year in addition to playing with his friends outside. For Klein, the sport was a great outlet to share something he enjoyed with the people he enjoyed.
“I connected with people that I am still friends with to this day through meeting them in experiences like basketball,” Klein said.
Basketball was something that Klein always enjoyed, and the hoop outside of his house was the perfect place to play. The neighborhood was always full of kids who were willing to join a game, and Klein was happy to have them over.
“I spent a lot of time with friends, and specifically with neighbors,” Klein said. “My house was always the gathering place for neighborhood basketball.”
But high school wasn’t just spent shooting hoops in the driveway. Klein was also busy working and trying to do well in school. He loved taking social studies classes and always made sure to work hard on his grades. He looks back on high school and remembers what a good time it was to work hard, but never forgot to have a good time with friends doing what he loved.
Leave a Reply