This year, Wauwatosa East has welcomed 17 new staff members to the school! Veteran staff members and students have already begun to meet and get to know these new individuals, however, The Cardinal News would like to speed up the process and allow everyone to get to know these new members of the Tosa East community.
To begin, there is the newly rebranded student services, including two new counselors. Both are also basketball coaches for our girls teams. First we have Mary Merg, a Whitewater graduate with a degree in history. After she graduated from UW-Whitewater, she worked in an entry level coaching position as the assistant coach for the women’s basketball team at Stanford. She suggests that everyone “travel[s] 500 miles out of their comfort zone because the world is just a vastly different place even 500 miles away.” Another new face in student services is Brian Henricks. Coming out of highschool, Mr. Hendricks wanted to be a sports broadcaster, like the next anchor on ESPN. After graduating, he helped coach the women’s team at Marquette, then tried taking over his dad’s company but ultimately concluded that he wanted to work in education, and Tosa East is where he landed.
While not a direct part of the student services department, we also have a new equity coordinator named Nikotris Perkins. Ms. Perkins is “a youth advocate and strategist” and she says, “Youth development and success is my passion and I believe the reason I was put on the earth. I do not take that charge lightly.” Ms. Perkins is at school, in room 108, next to the weight room Tuesdays and Thursdays for the entire school day, and Fridays through A lunch. She would also like to tell students “Find your passion and figure out how you can do that everyday for the rest of your life.”. She concludes this tip by mentioning that students should, “Look at the horizon when you walk and remember that there is not another you and that the world wouldn't function as it does without you, so own your journey with your shoulders back and your head high.” We have gained a student supervisor as well, named Milo Lee. Before working here, Lee worked as a school safety assistant at MPS for about 20 years. His friend from Wauwatosa West told him about an opening here. To compare the two schools,“the kids are about the same, but the kids are calmer here.”
Now, let’s explore the additions to our special education department. Tia Huppertz, a special education teacher, is the first to welcome. Ms. Huppertz is passionate about her job; she says, “it is absolutely never boring, I learn something new everyday.” Ms. Huppertz is not only passionate about her job, but also about Wauwatosa, “I want to stay here as long as humanly possible, I want to work in Tosa, live in Tosa, shop in Tosa, eat in Tosa. I love everything about Wauwatosa.” There are also two new assistants, Craig Hotchkiss and Lisa Mooney. Mr. Hotchkiss has returned to his home state of Wisconsin from a STEM school in Colorado. Special education has made a big impact on Hotchkiss’ teaching style. He says, “When I was a fourth grade teacher, I had a lot of kids that had special needs, so I had to plan my lessons where they were still a part of the group, even though they couldn’t do some of the things the regular education students could.”. He hopes to continue to work with and learn from a wide variety of students. Lisa Mooney has been in the district for two years as a sub but this is her first year as an educational assistant. Prior to this job, she was a teacher for 15 years in the N.Y.C area and she also worked for both a magazine and Random House, the book publisher. Ms. Mooney is very excited to be working as an educational assistant and says, “I love being an educational assistant because I get to work with students… I actually like it better than being a classroom teacher, because classroom teachers have so much to do in addition to just working with the kids.”
A couple new math teachers have also joined East. The first is Megan Monzingo. She originally wanted to be a nurse, but through high school her passions changed. She used to “critique her teachers” and that is when she realized that she wanted to be the one teaching. Her goal for this year is to make sure that students come into her class “having a good time while learning at the same time”. Monzingo has worked to make sure her classroom is a stress free place. She wants her students to be able to have “opportunities to work off of each other...instead of being silent and staring at the board while taking notes”. Next is Chorong Lee, who personally chose East because of the curriculum and diversity, which many schools lack. “There’s more engagement of the students, and more group work involved in the curriculum, and also because I wanted to teach where there is more diversity”. Ms. Lee plans on getting more involved with East’s extracurriculars in the future. “I plan on going to the games, and seeing the production of Pippin.”
Another department that has expanded, is world language. First, East has gained the already famous French teacher, Peter Morse. Mr. Morse previously taught theater classes at UWM and he was also in the acting field. Before working here, he mostly worked as a substitute in the Milwaukee area. Morse’s interest in French came from his grandmother, who taught him his first french words, which were “tais-toi” which translate to “shut up” in English. “In some ways, [french] was sort of something that has been handed down,” says Morse. There is also a new Spanish teacher named Rachel Coenen. She discovered she wanted to be a Spanish teacher during college. She says, “[I’d] study abroad in Spain for my minor, just something for fun, and then whenever I went abroad I loved Spanish and realized it’s something I wanted to do as a career”. Coenen is not only experienced in speaking the language but has plenty of experience in the culture, and she is a dedicated college graduate with a profound ability to speak a foreign language fluently.
Three other departments—Social Studies, English and Science—have each welcomed one new teacher to their part of the school. Taylor McDaniel is new to the social studies department, and he is teaching Global Studies. Mr. McDaniel is excited to be at East because he enjoys the debate high schoolers can have and the more detailed their arguments can be. Mr. McDaniel attended UW-Madison for his undergrad and masters, and he did not attend to be a teacher, he actually wanted to be a lawyer but he found out that it was not the career for him, as he wanted to educate young adults. He said “Wauwatosa East was a perfect way to get to the high school level”. In English, Chelsea Drenning has joined the department. Last year, Ms. Drenning was an assistant teacher in the Theatre and this year she continues her participation as a part of the technical staff. In the science department, there is a new teacher named Kelly Haskell, who is indeed married to Mr. Haskell of the Tech Department.
Some elective classes also have some new faces in their classrooms. Jeff Krubsack has joined the music department, more specifically band. Mr.Krubsack previously spent 5 years teaching in Minnesota and, he says “as a die hard Packer fan, I’m excited to finally live in Packer Land!” There is also a new art teacher, Amy Beattie. Beattie’s teaching career started in Qatar, a country in the Middle East. She taught at an American English school and taught kids from around the world how to speak English. “I learned a lot from such diverse students.” says Beattie. Ms. Beattie is very excited to have joined the East art department this year and so far she loves being here. Lastly, Business Ed has Ann Ross joining the department. Ms. Ross went to college to become a teacher but when she finished school, there was no job openings for her area of expertise so she ended up becoming a police officer. She worked with at risk students and through that, she met police officers and learned that “…law enforcement had a lot more to do with helping people than it did with just pulling people over for speeding” since there were no teaching jobs open, she decided to put herself through the police academy for ten years.