Annette Stoller has been teaching literature at Fieldston for many years and has enjoyed an unusual connection to a fellow English teacher in the Fieldston community: Ms. Charlotte Stabenau is her daughter. This dynamic duo of English educators shares the same passions but came to the profession in very different ways. Ms. Stoller recalls knowing she wanted to become a teacher from a very young age: \u201cWhen my younger brother would have his friends over to play, I would make them sit on one bed and I would sit on the other and be their teacher.\u201d One could certainly consider that childhood play that ends up prophetically becoming practice for one\u2019s profession. Before settling in at Fieldston, Ms. Stoller taught at Hamilton College and made her mark in history as one of the very first full-time female faculty members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ms. Stoller\u2019s daughter, Ms. Stabenau, clearly shared her mother\u2019s passion for teaching adolescents and literature but it was a true \u201caha\u201d moment in college that led her to the same career path as her mother. In college, Ms. Stabenau participated in an in-class exercise where she had to teach the meaning of a poem to her fellow students. She loved it. As a result, Ms. Stoller enrolled in a teacher training program at Tufts University and opted to become a high school teacher. Considering all the conventional ways that a mother-daughter relationship can so often become contentious, competitive and or interrupted by life complexities, their personal bond is as impressive as their teaching acumen. \u201cWe\u2019re almost, not quite, friends,\u201d Ms. Stoller began, checking her daughter\u2019s facial expression for a response,\u00a0 \u201cand I would say that we are and, in addition to that, now we\u2019re colleagues.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While sharing the same professional community, the mother-daughter team also enjoys other activities outside of the classroom. \u201cWe love spending time with family, seeing art, music and dance together. We also love to be outside and go shopping together\u2014especially department stores,\u201d explains Ms. Stabenau. There is clearly a passion for all forms of artistic expression in the DNA of this family. The family speaks German as well as English and always come back to their original love of literature. \u201cI think we share a love of two books, including Pride and Prejudice<\/em> (and almost all of Austen\u2019s novels) and George Eliot\u2019s Middlemarch<\/em>,\u201d explained Ms. Stoller, \u201cWe love Nineteenth Century literature and Victorian poetry because there\u2019s just so much happening at that time and it\u2019s reflected in the literature,\u201d she finished. What makes them both such exciting teachers in their own right is also the way they relate to students in the here and now and hope to forge a connection between modern times and the literature that hearkens back to a century (or more) before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s interesting to consider the value in exploring interests and honing in on a craft that naturally becomes a profession. Literature is definitely an art that explores the concept of community. Books, reading and talking about books certainly brings students together. Books can offer a value system, explore human nature and characters or describe life themes that come up in reality. A book can inspire a passion or motivate students to pursue a passion or craft. Having teachers in the Fieldston community that found their careers so easily could very well inspire students to do the same. Ms. Stabenau doesn\u2019t know if future generations in her family will follow in the same footsteps but hopes \u201cthey find something that contributes something positive to their communities. I\u2019m lucky to have found my calling, and I hope they do too.\u201d Other generations of students learned about literature and read books without the aid of computers, phones, TV shows and movies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kids today are so involved in their phones and the visual aspects of learning beyond reading. Growing up, parents tell their kids to shut off their devices and pick up a book. But that doesn\u2019t always have to be the case. Maybe movies as reenactments of books are helpful and make reading and exploring themes more connected to classic literary themes and books. \u201cThe movie Clueless<\/em>! is at the top of our list,\u201d Ms. Stabenau explains, \u201cBut you\u2019ve got to read Jane Austen\u2019s Emma<\/em> as well if you want to call yourself a true Clueless<\/em>! fan. Hot take,\u201d she quips with a smile. Who would\u2019ve seen Alicia Silverstone as Jane Austen\u2019s Emma? (As if!!!!) Only teachers that can seamlessly forge connections between the past and where the present is headed. We are lucky to call this mother daughter team a part of Fieldston\u2019s community. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Annette Stoller has been teaching literature at Fieldston for many years and has enjoyed an unusual connection to a fellow English teacher in the Fieldston community: Ms. Charlotte Stabenau is her daughter. This dynamic duo of English educators shares the same passions but came to the profession in very different ways. Ms. Stoller recalls knowing she wanted to become a teacher from a very young age: \u201cWhen my younger brother would have his friends over<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":327,"featured_media":7647,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[347,318],"tags":[],"coauthors":[478],"class_list":["post-7646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Screenshot-2023-05-01-at-9.57.38-PM.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/327"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7646"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7652,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7646\/revisions\/7652"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7646"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}