Minnehaha prepares for changes to its English department as teachers change positions
Minnehaha’s English department will be seeing some changes in the fall of 2017, as old teachers move on and new teachers move in.
This spring, both Katherine Myers and Robyn Westrem announced their change in positions, as Myers is leaving to teach at Mounds Park Academy and Westrem will be taking over for Bonnie Morris, who is retiring, as librarian.
To fill these missing positions in the English department, the administration has hired two experienced teachers to step in.
Stephanie Sommer has been hired to teach English 11 and AP English 11 and comes to Minnehaha from World Savvy, a non-profit organization dedicated to working with schools and educators to provide high quality education in K-12 classrooms.
Sommer also has experience as an English teacher at Mounds Park Academy and as a corporate marketing manager.
She graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with an undergraduate degree in English and later attended Fordham and New York University to get her master’s degrees.
Sommer currently lives in St. Paul with her family.
Additionally, Kristin Henderson has been hired to take on some English 9 and English 10 classes.
Henderson has been teaching middle school English at St. Croix Preparatory Academy in Stillwater for six years.
Before that she worked as a volunteer coordinator at Common Hope, an organization that aims to improve healthcare, housing and education in Guatemala.
Henderson graduated from the College of St. Benedict and Augsburg College.
She currently lives about two miles from Minnehaha’s north campus in Minneapolis with her son and husband, a short distance that makes the commute to Minnehaha easy.