Why did you decide you wanted to teach–specifically middle school? I’ve taught every grade from 6-12 at one point. I like teaching middle school specifically because you teach foundational skills, it’s not just how to write an essay, it’s about writing habits. How to think of yourself as a writer, building writing stamina, reading stamina, finding out what you are as a reader like what interests you and the things that we will come back to over and over again in life. The books that you read as a teenager have a huge impact on you. Ask any adult and they will tell you their favorite book they read as a kid, and they can remember the entire plot. After college I had an undergraduate degree in photography, so I worked in photography for a while. I was a news editor at a news agency in new york, worked at a picture desk meaning I handed the flow of images coming in as they were being recorded–it was a very high stress fast passed environment then I worked as a producer for producer photographers so I did–I produced work for photographers for vogue, mary claire, all of the big magazines and fashion houses and all that stuff that’s the kind of work that i did for a couple years, and then I got kind of burnt out because it just got kind of meaningless and i had done teaching right after undergraduate i had been a peace corps volunteer in kyrgyzstan and so I remembered that being meaningful to me so I decided to go back to teaching so that’s when I went back and got my masters to become a teacher What inspiration did you have to become a teacher? My mother was a teacher. I always looked up to her and I had teachers that meant a lot to me when I was a teenager even though I would not consider myself to be great at math, my math teacher was really an excellent teacher, shoutout to mr. nagrodski, he was really a great teacher. I took 7 years of math and 4 years of high school because I doubled up. He was a really great teacher. ACTUAL ARTICLE: Who is Ms. Monaco? Her full name is Elizabeth Monaco. Ms. Monaco teaches English to 7th graders and she teaches one elective, journalism, which is a 7th and 8th grade mix class. This is her first year working at Rosemont Middle School! Welcome! Ms. Monaco likes teaching middle school specifically because she can teach foundational skills. To her, it’s more about, for example, your writing habits over just how to write an essay. She teaches to help you learn how to think of yourself as a writer, how to build writing stamina, reading stamina, finding out what you are as a reader (like what interests you) and the things that you will come back to over and over again in life. She also says that the books that you read when you’re a teenager will have a huge impact on you in the future. She quotes, “Ask any adult and they’ll tell you a favorite book they read as a kid, and they can remember the entire plot.” Ms. Monaco went to multiple colleges. She did her undergraduate at the University of Illinois at Urbana, Champaign, and then went to NYU for her masters degree. She had an undergraduate degree in photography, so she worked in photography for a while as a news editor at a news agency in New York. She handled the flow of images coming in as they were being recorded. She then worked as a producer for producer photographers for vogue, Mary Claire, and all of the big magazines and fashion houses. She did this for a couple years, eventually getting burned out because it was all meaningless to her. She became a peace corps volunteer in Kyrgyzstan, remembering that it was meaningful to her, so she decided to go back to teaching. That is when she went back and got her masters to become a teacher. Shes been through a lot! Her main inspiration for becoming a teacher in the first place was her mother. Her mother was a teacher, and she had always looked up to her. She also had certain teachers when she was a teenager that meant a lot to her, (shoutout to Mr. Nagrodski! Ms. Monaco says he really was a great teacher!) Ms. Monaco truly is an inspiration to all of her students. Thank you, Ms. Monaco!