When many people think about the talent at Wilmington Friends School, they think about the rigorous academics and competitive sports. It is true that our students have talent like no other, but who is helping them grow and stretch their abilities? The teachers. The teachers at Friends dedicate unmatched time and e!ort to helping students expand their knowledge and skillset. Students would not be suc- ceeding without the teacher’s help, but there was a time when our teachers did not teach. Here at Friends, many teachers have had other jobs that eventually led them here. But what are those jobs?
$e level three Spanish teacher, Rodri Saldaña, known as Profe, had multi- ple jobs before teaching. He grew up in Spain, majored in journaling, and became a journalist there. Profe worked for three di!erent newspa- pers for three years. He was also a tour guide in Toledo, Spain for a little bit. A&er this, he moved to France and worked in the communications department of a can- cer research hospital. He communicated the research the hospital did to the public. He simpli- “ed the more complicated things the doctors did or discovered and presented them to the public. He also worked in France as a private Spanish teacher to teenagers. Profe discov- ered a love for teaching at this job and decided he wanted to pursue that. Profe says, “I was giving private lessons, working with teenagers, and I realized I liked it.” He was also ready to move out of France before he focused on teaching. Profe claims, “I chose the US because I like to live in other countries.” He can speak Spanish, French, and English, which shows his talent. Profe got his master’s in teaching while in the US and worked as a teacher in Nashville for “ve years and Philadel- phia for one before coming to WFS. Profe is a very loved teacher at our school and has helped many students understand Spanish. He has a fun and exciting teaching style, incorporating many di!erent topics, and we learn about them in Spanish. He explains journalism taught him this style. Profe says, “I think because when I was a journalist, normally you have di!erent interests like sports, politics, physics, and things, and I think that’s useful speci”cally for teaching another language because for me, teaching another language is just teaching another way to express the things you like. So I can integrate physics, I can talk about food, I can talk about many things.”
Next, one of WFS’s highly esteemed math teachers, Sarah Stock. Before working at WFS, she was a full-time professor at Duke for $ve years and a visitor professor at MIT for a year. At Duke, she taught Decision Science and Data Science Classes in Duke’s Fuqua School of business. She taught both MBA and PhD classes, an example being combinatorial optimization and transpor- tation science class. At MIT, she taught an engineering class. In both places, she was mainly a researcher. She did a big research project on airlines, trying to minimize costs by $guring out how long an airplane had to stay on the ground to land right away and not waste time in the air. Sarah had to “Figure out for every &ight in the system how much ground holds each &ight should be assigned in order to minimize costs.” Other similar projects she did include minimizing the amount of time Duke can- cer patients are in the cancer center, making Disneyworld lines faster, and helping Eli Lilly have the most e%cient producing machines. About her projects, Sarah says, “Which seems really discon- nected.. But mathematically, they are all very similar.” Sarah moved to high school teaching because it $t her per- sonal life best. Sarah explains, “Leaving something like that, it’s really hard to go back, because your not up with the latest research.” Sarah misses the research, but she knows teaching high school $ts best with her life, and she still loves teaching kids. Her main job as a professor was researching. She says, “As a new professor I was told just teach what you have to teach don’t put any time into planning those lessons just go teach it because you won’t be promoted for being a good teacher.” However, she quickly adapted to the switch. WFS bene$ted so much from having her at our school, and without her experi- ence, she wouldn’t be the fantastic teacher we know. Last but not least, John Roskovensky. He is a Math and science teacher here at Wilmington Freinds, but he has had another career. He worked as a teacher at places like Peace Core, New York, and even Belgium. An exciting job he had was working for the government as a scientist at Sandia National Laboratories. Roskovensky has a PhD in atmospheric science, and he has spent a lot of time studying cirrus clouds. Cirrus clouds are high- ice clouds. !ey can be very thin, absorb greenhouse gases, and change the climate. Understanding those clouds helps us understand the weather and where to &y airplanes. When he worked with di#erent government agencies, he continued working with clouds and other things, getting several patents and even doing classi$ed jobs. When asked why he loved teaching, Roskovensky said, “I just enjoyed it…I never thought about teach- ing before, and I really loved it.” He started teaching at Peace Core in Eswatini to educate kids when teachers were lacking. It was more of a volunteer job, but he le” Eswatini a better place with more teachers. He says, “I always had teaching on my mind.” Roskovensky claims that his research and teaching jobs have di#erent focuses, but even at his research job, he loved teaching. Roskovensky says, “Even with my job I al- ways was the person that liked to work with other people and teach the young people that were coming in like the interns.” In terms of how being a scientist helped him teach, he mentions how project planning as a scientist is very similar to the IB Programme, so he can help kids with their IA’s and other projects. Roskovensky helps stu- dents learn, plan, and succeed, using his past experiences to help them. From journalists to scientists, Friends’ teachers have been everywhere. !eir years of experience and di#erent perspectives create a fun and engaging environ- ment in the classroom. !ese are only a couple examples of Friends’ talented teachers, and learning more about them could open students’ eyes to di#erent job opportu- nities. Asking teachers, even those mentioned, will open doors into professions that don’t o”en come to mind. Our teachers help students grow into their best selves, and we have them to thank for student’s accomplish- ments.
