Ms. Rickert: From Hong Kong to the Big Apple, Now Back to the Acad

By JENNIFER CHEN ‘19

Jenn: Why did you want to become a teacher, especially at a private school?

I became a teacher 20 years ago. My first teaching experience full time was at Deerfield Academy….I really wanted to learn how to be an expert teacher of English literature. I had also applied to Teach For America, and my assignment was to be a middle school math teacher. I was an English major, [ and although] I did also love math, I realized that if I went into a teaching profession that wasn’t what my passion was, I would probably wind up out of the teaching profession pretty quickly….that’s why I chose English.

Jenn: Can you talk about your experience at Milton Academy, particularly as an English student here?

I came to Milton in first grade, so I spent many years here. As a student, I was pretty quiet in the classroom….I spent a lot of time singing and doing the musical theater productions. I loved English, but also was really into math and science. I was convinced I wanted to be a scientist when I was a senior at Milton. I applied to MIT, and didn’t get in. So I became an English major at Yale. I loved learning while I was at Milton, but probably didn’t find my voice until I was a student in graduate school.

Jenn: How did you become an English major, originally wanting to become a science major?

I’ll just give you the unvarnished answer….I had one teacher, Lindy Eyster, who was just transformational. She was the reason I wanted to study science. Then I got to college, and I realized that [science] was a much more solo and self-directed experience than I had known at Milton….I also live, breathe, and eat books, so it may have come out in the end that I would have become an English major anyway.

Jenn: How was the Hong Kong university different from anywhere else you worked in the U.S, and how has that also formed you?

I had done really well as a teacher at Deerfield. I figured out the Deerfield way, and I felt very proud of the way I was teaching my classes. So I brought that to my [first year college] students at Hong Kong….Two of my students came to me after a few weeks and said, “Julia, your teaching is perfect….There’s just one thing: we don’t understand anything you’re asking us to do.”

….I realized that no matter what new classroom I’m in, my students will have different educational experiences, and I can’t take that for granted….I’m not sure if I would have learned that if I hadn’t had crashing failure in my third year of teaching.

Jenn: Do you think you’ll ever teach college students in the U.S. as well?
I only teach one class here. In my other life, I work at a college called College Unbound in Providence. This is a college for adult learners who have tried college before…[and] work at the poverty level, have families, and work jobs full time while going to school full time. I do grant writing and think about how to raise funds. I would love to work with students there, as well as make the budget work.

What are the differences you notice between the school then and now?

One of the biggest differences I’ve faced is that we were trained to be excellent, critical thinkers. We were able to slice and dice anything….Deconstruct it. But in life, that also meant we were able to do that to each other as human beings. There was less of an emphasis on synthesis, or creation, or building people up. There was a bit more of focus on the excellent student. I think that this is absolutely still present here, but I notice that in the Opening of School speeches, there was so much more about being in the moment, being kind to each other, building something….Maybe that was there when I was a student, I just didn’t see it. But it feels really, really present now.

What are you interested in now?

My hobby right now is editing my friend’s novel — my roommate in Business school….I’ve become her unofficial editor, and she goes through her processes of writing these novels that are amazing and beautiful….It’s been so much fun reading her novel and giving her feedback for the past two years.

What’s your favorite book?

I can give you two. One is Midnight’s Children, [by] Salman Rushdie. The other one is the Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, [by]Junot Diaz—I wound up finishing it while on a beach in the Dominican Republic. I’d never been there, so the sidenotes throughout the book actually were the best travel guide.