One Stillwater High School teacher has traveled to more than 20 countries and has lived abroad for 10 years of her life. Spanish teacher Ms. DeGroot said she found her passion for connecting with people across different boundaries.
“It’s hard to say which place is my favorite,” DeGroot said. “Different places offer you different things. Mexico and Peru are probably my two overall favorite places because they are countries I have lived in and traveled to pretty extensively, and they have the best food.”
Her broad travels aren’t just for fun; they are tied to her work and aspirations. Currently a high school teacher, DeGroot has also worked as an ESL teacher for four years as well.
“You know, I actually moved back by accident. I came to Stillwater on vacation to visit my mom and was offered a job,” she said. “I love teaching and I love the connections I make every day with students and with our staff.”
Before teaching, DeGroot spent time as a co-director of a non-profit in Canada supporting migrant workers and even worked in tech recruitment.
“I liked the money I made at that job, but it was definitely a bit of a ‘finance bro job,’” she said.
If DeGroot was not a teacher, she’d want to be a researcher.
“I would like to get my PhD and be a professor who teaches and does research, either in anthropology or Latin American Studies. Making those human connections is where my heart lives, and I believe that building our collective memory through research and writing is where I need to be,” DeGroot said.
DeGroot, or Profesora DeGroot, has two brilliant, bilingual, bicultural daughters with her husband Enzo, who is an indigenous designer.
“Living in Peru was a trip”, she said. “I lived there for five or six years, if you add it all up,” she said. “It was difficult at first, because the first time I went, I was studying abroad, and I ended up falling in love and wanting to go back. Traveling is what has defined my life, that and the connections I have made with people along the way.
“I also like slow, secondhand, vintage and sustainable fashion, and I have a bit of a social media following,” DeGroot said
One day, DeGroot made a TikTok video talking about her experience living abroad and it went viral
“I was critiquing the way that my American privilege let me access things that other foreigners or people in my situation typically couldn’t access,” she said. “I made a few more TikToks about the silly, awkward, bad, good, crazy things that have happened to me, that I’ve done, that people have said to me, and I started getting partnerships with malls, brands and people started sending me free stuff like crazy.”
Back in her Spanish classroom, her favorite part of teaching is helping students connect with their language.
“I love when my Hispanic students connect with their language, and it’s the best thing in the world to know that they enter my classroom knowing that it is their space, and they can learn, make mistakes, and that however developed or underdeveloped their Spanish is, I am here for it,” DeGroot said.