By: Avalynne Russell  

     Since it has been 10 years and Eisenhower is gaining so many new students next year, The Squire figured we should give everyone a closer look at our favorite boss lady, Ms. Howe. We have so many things to say about our amazing advisor, but as she always says, “we’re on a time crunch” so we will give you the Cliff Notes version of her, and, if you join journalism, you will see, firsthand, just how wonderful she is.  

     According to Ms. Howe, she has always wanted to be a teacher. Her mother was a teacher, and she loved to go to her classroom with her as a child. She even knew that she wanted to be a high school teacher from the time she was in high school, sharing, “I imagined myself in a job that I enjoyed and found rewarding, and was hoping teaching was it.” After high school, Ms. Howe attended Penn State for teaching, where she also discovered her love for communications. While she claims to have never wished for another job, she said that if she could not be a teacher, she would “…also enjoy a career in marketing or advertising.” Now that she is living in her lifelong goal of teaching, Ms. Howe teaches a variety of literature and communications-based classes, including Speech, Journalism, Arts and Communications, and, of course, English. In her job, she connects with students to help expand their knowledge and get to know them better, sharing funny stories about her past, like the time she accidentally hit a kid in the face with a basketball, or ridiculous things that she does in her day to day, such as searching everywhere for her car keys when they are actually just in the cupholder in her car. Through these funny stories and laughs, Ms. Howe loves to watch her students grow up.  

     When asked about her favorite aspect of teaching, she said, “I love that each day has the great combination of both routine and predictability, and also something new and unexpected. Time flies by and there always is, for better or worse, something different each day.” As we all know at The Squire, a lot of that “worse” comes from the new technological issues that we encounter each and every week while trying to produce the news show, and, even more entertaining, having to tell her journalism sophomores, or “Journalism tweens,” as she lovingly calls them, to stop touching each other. Even through these frustrating obstacles, Ms. Howe loves working at Eisenhower, telling us, “Before teaching in Warren County, I taught in Pittsburgh. While I enjoyed my time there, I came back to Warren County, where I’m from, and found a home at Eisenhower. It is a special place, where I have really been able to grow professionally and connect with the community.” The students and staff that she works with never have anything but nice things to say about her, other than how much English homework she gives, and would definitely agree that her bosses are likely to describe her as “… dedicated, dependable, knowledgeable, and passionate about teaching.” 

     Now that you know a little bit more about her work life, we figured that we should share a little bit more about her personality as well. When she is not doing things involving teaching, Ms. Howe enjoys spending time with friends, hiking with her dog, Indie, working on home improvement projects, and, her personal favorite, travelling. Ms. Howe has been all over the world, visiting places like Iceland and Italy, with some of her bucket list locations being Greece, Switzerland, and Africa. As she said, “I would like to experience each place for different reasons, but most importantly, they all offer something different than I’ve experienced before, whether it be different landscapes, languages, cultures, food, or architecture.” She loves travelling so much that when we asked her what she would title her autobiography, she readily answers, “The Travelling Teacher… or, more accurately, The Perpetual Essay Grader.” She dedicates so much time to grading that it actually mixes with some of her travel time. She once shared with her journalism class while she graded quizzes on a flight home from one of her travels, a woman sitting next her asked if her students had even read the book the test was on because they did so badly on it. She shared with us that she wishes that she had the superpower to magically grade all her essays at the same time to save her some time.  

     We may be a little bit biased, but we like to think that Ms. Howe enjoys teaching journalism as much as we enjoy having her as our teacher. She manages to accomplish so many things with us and even takes us on field trips. Some of her students from the 2023-2024 school year recall a field trip to St. Bonaventure’s CommDay, where students lost track of time and had to sprint across campus in the pouring rain to make it back to the bus on time. Being on time sort of happened, with exception of being two minutes late, and Ms. Howe just laughed at how out of breath and wet her journalism students were. This winter, she also took students out to the Ecolab to create a cross-country skiing news show segment, where students had a blast, except for maybe one of her Journalism seniors, Drew Mandeville, who was laughed at for falling so many times.  

     After all the years of memories, we asked Ms. Howe if she would be doing anything different ten years from now, and she shared, “In ten years, I hope to still be enjoying my teaching career. I look forward to continuing growing our journalism and communications programs at Eisenhower. I hope I will still be finding purpose and joy in teaching, as well as new ways to grow professionally and personally. I also plan to continue spending my summers seeing new places, doing new things, and meeting new people all over the world.” We cannot speak for others, but we think that this sounds like the perfect plan for Ms. Howe, and her students in ten years will be lucky to have her.  

      Even though this article seems long, we have only barely touched on how incredible Ms. Howe is as a teacher and the amazing memories she has created with her students over the years. The Squire would like to thank Ms. Howe for taking time out of her ever-busy grading schedule to answer our questions. If you are thinking about some new electives to take in the years to come, we strongly encourage you to try out a class with the remarkable mind behind journalism, Ms. Howe.