Reidy for the School Year

The Holy Family staff has seen many changes for the 2020-21 school year. The most peppy is definitely Meghan Reidy, the new Spanish teacher.

During her time at Texas Christian University, on her way to a double degree in Anthropology combined with Spanish and Hispanic Studies, Reidy studied abroad in Spain for five months, actually living and speaking the culture she was so excited to learn about. “I studied Spanish because I really wanted to be able to speak to people in their first language. It was really important to me to hear people’s stories without someone else translating them. But it was not easy. I think that’s part of what made me like it. It meant a lot to do well in the classes. It meant more than anthropology that came a little bit easier. So I was really proud of myself.”

After her time in Spain, Reidy started her job at an Immigration Law Firm. “I worked on applications for people who were trying to adjust their status in the United States… or they were in removal proceedings, so they were already in immigration court. I worked on with the affirmative and removal side of things, and then I worked mostly with unaccompanied minors and juveniles, refugees and asylum seekers.”

After a while Reidy moved on to her road to teaching. She went back to school at Notre Dame and got her masters in education, and has been teaching in a classroom for three years.

The calling for Reidy to become a teacher was pretty clear once she looked at her past jobs and really thought about what she loved. “I really avoided becoming a teacher because everyone told me that was what I would do. And then when I was working for JPII outdoor lab, which was the outdoor education and faith formation organization at annunciation heights, I realized that I really liked teaching. Everything that I liked about my other jobs had just been teaching students or people, but I wanted to be an actual teacher so that I could have a relationship with the students over time and not just have kids that came up to camp for like a week and then left.”

So far, Reidy is loving Holy Family, and Holy Family is loving her too. “I think that the teachers are really supportive of one another, but also it seems like the teachers really care about the students, and that’s one of the reasons I became a teacher, and so it’s nice to be a part of a team that shares the same approach or reasons for teaching that I do.”

Holy Family is lucky to have Meghan Reidy as an addition to the staff this year. Her enthusiasm for her students and Spanish definitely shows, and she brings a light to the teachers, staff, and students here at Holy Family.