This year, Western welcomed many new teachers. Mrs. Grove is one of them, arriving from Tandem Friends School to teach in Western’s mathematics department.

Mrs. Grove’s story is very unique, beginning in South Africa, where she was born. She lived there until 1983, when she came to America for the first time as an exchange student. It was not her first time out of South Africa – in 1980, she went on a trip to Egypt and Israel with her family. However, her trip to America was the first time she had ever been so far away, for such a long time and most importantly, all on her own.

“People were louder. I remember the stores – especially the grocery stores – were full of things. There was so much choice, for everything. In restaurants, for example, you can’t order something without the waiter asking you so many questions about what you want with it, what kind of dressing…” Mrs Grove said, describing the initial cultural shock that any foreigner would feel coming to the US for the first time.

Her exchange year permitted her not only to enjoy the differences in the everyday life, but also to discover this incomparable thing that is an American high school. She was used to a very strict South African high school, and when she attended to her new American high school for the first time, she couldn’t believe how different it was. “In South Africa, when a teacher walked in, you had to stand up, and say ‘good morning’. There was also corporal punishments – they used to hit us. For the girls it was on the hand with a ruler, and the boys on the back. You had to wear school uniforms, and you couldn’t wear any makeup, no jewelry, and no nail polish. But it was also fun; it was kind of like the school in Harry Potter but without magic. I couldn’t believe all of the differences when I arrived here for the first time. You could wear anything, people argued with teachers, they had attitude…but I feel like here kids were nicer, more accepting of the difference.”

After the initial confusion, she began to fit in, looking and behaving more and more like her peers. “And at the end of the year I also got an attitude. I wasn’t proud of myself but I remember doing it, giving teachers a hard time,” Mrs Grove added, smiling at her memories.

And when asked what system she ended up preferring, Mrs Grove could not make up her mind. “We worked hard in South Africa and learned a lot. So as a teacher, I wish here was more like there. But as a student, being here was so much fun. So I like both.”

And after high school, back in South Africa, it was time for college. Once again, she can compare both systems, as she attended four different universities – the University of Cape Town, Hofstra University, Columbia University and the University of Virginia.

“I was too young when I went to college in South Africa, and it took me a while to figure things out. And I love school, I just love to learn things.” Her job as a teacher can be explained by this statement – she used her love for studies to end up teaching math, and now here she is at Western. She first was a student teacher in New York for six months, before moving to Albemarle in 1992 because her husband attended to the University of Virginia. She first taught at Walton Middle school for six years, and then at Tandem for seventeen years.

“I just want to say that for me, in the middle of my career, coming to a new place and new big school like this, is rejuvenating. I’ve learned new things that I had stopped learning, so I’m very grateful for that. And as frustrating as it can be sometimes, like ‘oh, they are not doing their work’ it’s still very fun to do something new and I think that when you are my age, people are so nervous to try something new, but change it’s exciting. It makes me feel not so old.”