In the Fall of 2020, Emily Mitchell, an Upper School math faculty, joined the Masters community. Since then, she has taught many classes including Topics in Precalculus and Statistics while being an advisor and dorm parent for Cole Dorm. 

Though 2020 was Mitchell’s first year at Masters, she started teaching high school in Boston three years earlier. Being a high school teacher was not Mitchell’s first job after graduating from Bowdoin College in 2014. “I did a couple of different jobs outside of college, one of which was working at the University of Southern Maine in the Office of Engaged Learning,” Mitchell said. 

Whether it is in the classroom or the office, Mitchell chose to work in the field of education because of her love for children. “I was always that person babysitting little kids when I was younger, so I knew I wanted to teach,” she said.

Now, having spent some years in her career as a teacher, Mitchell has found her passion in the relationships she can build with students. Moving forward, Mitchell’s goal is to return to working in universities after obtaining a master’s degree in higher education administration. She said, “Through teaching, I realized what I really enjoy is the relationships and less so the actual act of teaching. So I’m hoping to move into academic advising for something similar at a university level.”

Looking back at her time at Masters, Mitchell said that it has helped her to reach this decision as the school is relationship-based and places emphasis on individual connections. “I loved being a dorm parent. I had a great time. I love the Cole girls. That sense of community and being with students in a way that I’m not grading them was really enjoyable,” Mitchell said.

Sophomore Hannah Xu is a new student in Cole this year as well as a student in Mitchell’s honors Algebra II class. “Ms. Mitchell is a really trustful and dependable person. For me as a new student this year and as someone in Ms. Mitchell’s dorm, she is a really great dorm parent and is always dedicating extra time to help students out whenever they need,” Xu said. 

Mitchell has also found ways to extend her expertise in math to her relationship with the students in Cole dorm. Xu said, “She will always host extra study sessions before math tests and pull the math community together in the dorm.”

As an advisor, Mitchell has been a figure to turn to when students needed help. Senior Luca Lorance, a member of Mitchell’s advisory, said, “I think that Ms. Mitchell is a great advisor. Especially this year, senior year was really hard, but she was there to support me. She would always say ‘Do you need me to help you’, ‘Let’s set up a meeting so we could talk about how you could manage yourself’ and things like that. So overall she’s been really supportive as an advisor.”

Inside the classroom, Mitchell has incorporated activities alongside math learning to make her lessons varied. “She’s very buoyant and very vibrant in the classroom. She’s always trying to make things more fun, like one time she had bingo and a lot of different ways to get group work done,” Xu said.

When asked to reflect on the past three years, Mitchell described it as interesting. Having joined the community in the middle of the pandemic, starting her time here on Zoom then in hybrid learning, Mitchell said her experience might not have been a normal one but she was still able to build relationships in and out of the classroom. “I like the emphasis [at Masters] on community and social justice and valuing people for who they are. And my time here has been very interesting and varied,” she said.