Crimson Shield February 2013

She had no thought of teaching when she started college at Centenary in Shreveport.

She started as a biology major with the idea of becoming a chiropractor. Just one problem. I loathed lab. She had to redo her chemistry experiments because she didn't get the exact results required.
So she switched to Business Administration with a minor in Spanish. I was thinking International Business.
After testing out of the first two years of Spanish, she started with Spanish 301, which required writing five-page papers analyzing a work of literature. It was rough, well beyond the scope of what I experienced in high school. Most of the people in the class were native speakers.
Fortunately, her professor worked with her privately and helped her once again to succeed in a challenging situation.

An internship influenced her to change her focus again.

Her job at an international sales company was to keep up with contacts in Mexico.

You know what? I hated it. I realized business is very cut throat. It wasn't part of my personality. I wanted more satisfaction out of my work. It has to be something where I feel I'm contributing to a better society.

She signed up for a course in Mexico for the summer after her graduation in May 2002. She had lived there one semester in college. But travel restrictions after 9/11 nixed her plans.
So she switched to a similar course in Boston that involved learning how to teach English to Spanish speakers.
She enjoyed Boston so much that she decided to stay. She taught eight-week courses to adults at the Cambridge Adult Education Center and for the city of Somerville in the northern suburbs of Boston.

She made two discoveries during her year in Massachusetts.

She really enjoyed teaching.

When you're teaching adults, you have to be authentic. They're taking your class to survive in their new environment.
Boston's summer weather doesn't last year-round.

It was really cold, the longest winter of my life. I was sick the whole time.

So she moved back with her parents in Houma.

With teaching now her path, she signed with Terrebonne Parish Public Schools for substitute teaching and 4th grade LEAP test remediation. Once again, she learned what she did not want to do. I lasted a semester.
Having gotten a taste of big city life in Boston, she moved to New Orleans and began taking courses at UNO for certification. She worked at the Palace Cafe and taught several classes at a small private school.

She took a teaching job at Archbishop Hannan in St. Bernard Parish for the 2005-6 school year.

Katrina cut that short. I had a three-week career.
Since the home her family owned uptown was damaged by the storm, she moved back to Houma and immediately went to her alma mater.

Remember me? They graciously took me in. I taught all the Katrina students in a trailer: 9th grade English, Spanish, and senior religion. It was a revolving door. New faces every day.
It was her first time teaching high school.

I was back with what I was familiar with. Plenty of my former teachers were there to help me. I really enjoyed my first year. I taught a senior religion class, a really nice group. I fell in love with the idea of teaching high school and helping them with spiritual and moral development and making life choices. I can contribute to the bigger picture.

After two years, the uptown home was ready. So Cherie came back to New Orleans.

Through the New Orleans Province Leadership Committee, the Vandebilt principal found out Brother Martin had an opening. I didn't apply anywhere else.
Martha Rais, the acting World Language chair, interviewed Cherie in Spanish.

It was a good lateral transition. It was really nice staying within the brothers' charism.

She's taught Spanish to 9th-, 10th-, and 11th-graders.

I'm enjoying the freshmen because it's all new to them. There's a certain magic to that, exposing them to so much for the first time. The junior level is more academically challenging. I like pushing the honors classes.

I enjoy the well-roundedness of teaching a foreign language. There's a variety of activities. We read, we listen, we speak, we have dialogs. We study culture and geography.

After a year of helping with cheerleading, she found her extra-curricular niche as Key Club moderator.

I was big on Key Club at Vandebilt. I was historian one year, and my scrapbook won at the District Convention. I like molding kids into a life of community service, getting them into different places in the city where they wouldn't otherwise be. You can also build leadership. It's a good fit for me, part of what holistic education is.

The time demands have varied from year-to-year based on how big the club is and how willing the members are. Cherie is thankful that Andree Price has been her co-moderator the last few years.
The entire school knows about the white paper recycling drive the Key Club began three years ago.

The Key Club motto is to build home, school, and community. We did so much in the community that we were looking for a way to contribute more at school. The Campus Ministry theme that year was environmental consciousness. So I looked into recycling and chose white paper because it was (a) what we had the most waste in and (b) feasible. The company picks up the bins at no cost every two weeks.