Ms. Stoller and Ms. Stabenau: Mother and Daughter

Last winter, Charlotte Stabenau, one of the newest additions to the Fieldston English department was not exactly an unfamiliar face – her mother, Annette Stoller, has been teaching literature here for many years. The Fieldston News sat down with the mother-daughter pair to talk about what it is like to be colleagues and to learn more about them.
Growing up, Ms. Stabenau lived in many different cities with her father and her mother, whom we all know as Ms. Stoller. She was born in New York City, spent two years in Riverdale and ended up in Pelham for a year. Then, Ms. Stabenau’s father – Ms. Stoller’s husband – was transferred to work in Frankfurt, Germany. His new job relocated the entire family to Europe for six years. “So,” Ms. Stoller proudly stated, “[Ms. Stabenau] is really bilingual, and sometimes we speak a little German at home.”
After those six years in Germany, where Ms. Stoller taught English and Ms. Stabenau went to school, the family returned to Edgemont, New York. “That’s where my parents have been ever since,” Ms. Stabenau explained, “And I, except for stints in Connecticut and Boston for college and graduate school, have been in New York ever since.”
One of the questions on our mind for the dynamic duo was, “What inspired you to become teachers?” Ms. Stoller knew that she wanted to be a teacher from the beginning. “My poor brother, he was three years younger… we shared a room and when his friends would come to play with him, I would make them sit on one bed and I would sit on the other bed and I would be the teacher.” Before coming to Fieldston, Ms. Stoller taught at Hamilton College, where she was one of the first full-time female faculty members.
Although both of Ms. Stabenau’s parents were teachers, “it really began for me with a love of literature that grew into a more serious academic interest in college.” Ms. Stabenau noted a profound experience in college where she had to teach a poem to her class. This experience of teaching a poem to others influenced her to enroll in teacher training at Tufts. “I loved working with adolescents and I loved my subject, so the best way to combine the two is to become a high school teacher!”
When asked about their favorite books, Ms. Stoller immediately answered, “I think we share a love of two books, including Pride and Prejudice (and almost all of Austen’s novels) and George Elliot’s Middle March. I think they are both, may I say, our favorites?” Ms. Stabenau agreed, adding, “I love Nineteenth Century literature and Victorian poetry and romantic poetry. There’s just so much happening at that time intellectually and that’s reflected in the literature of the time and its an endless source of study and conversation.”
As the interview came to a close, we spoke about what it is like for Mrs. Stoller and Ms. Stabenau to be colleagues. “I just think it’s the great fortune that we work together and we’re—I think we’re—as she’s gotten older I think we’ve become—” Ms. Stoller paused, glancing at her daughter, before continuing, “We’re almost, not quite, friends.” Ms. Stabenau smiled and added, “I would say that we are, and that in addition to that now we’re colleagues. It’s a joy and it’s another dimension for our relationship that has been just a lot of fun especially for me, and its also been so wonderful having that kind of support her so that I don’t feel lost.” Nevertheless, she explained, the mother-daughter pair both understand “how much there still is to learn and how much there still is to teach and how much we have to discover about each other.”