Amy Randall is a remarkable Spanish teacher who is always ready to help her students thrive and learn to their full potential. Born and raised in Rice Lake, Amy currently lives in Chippewa Falls. While attending high school, Amy shares that she was given the exciting chance to travel France as an exchange student with Rotary International which helped her to become fluent in French. She adds that she also traveled to Mexico as an exchange student when she attended the University of Wisconsin-River Falls.
“My favorite place that I have been is probably Berlin. While living in France I traveled all over Europe with the Rotary club, and Berlin is a place I would love to go back to someday,” she comments.
After graduating high school, Amy went on to earn a Bachelor of Science in French Language and Literature and a Bachelor of Science in Spanish Language and Literature from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls. She is currently in graduate school for a master’s degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and aside from attending college and her extensive travels, Amy has lived in northern Wisconsin for all of her life.
She may not have grown up in the Stanley-Boyd community, but the Stanley-Boyd community has won Amy’s heart. Amy was excited to begin working at Stanley-Boyd six years ago and have a classroom to call her own. “My first teaching job I was a Spanish teacher on a cart. I didn’t have my own classroom, I had all of my supplies on a cart and went to different people’s rooms to teach.” Teaching students a new language takes skill, dedication, and a lot of patience, a trait that Amy says that her students teach her every day. This year she is most excited “to see how much my students can grow with their language skills!”
Amy enjoys teaching, especially when she hears students using their Spanish skills outside of the classroom. Being able to speak three languages has opened up many opportunities for Amy and she hopes that parents know that she understands the fear and hesitation students might have learning a new language. She wants parents to know that “it’s okay if they feel nervous speaking in a new language, and that even if it’s not Spanish, I hope they continue to learn at least one language other than English.”
Amy hopes that people understand that teachers don’t always have the option to choose what they teach. “Standards are set for us most of the time,” she remarks. Every educator has ups and downs in their career and Amy shares that the hardest challenge of her nine-year career in education happened a few years ago. “The pandemic was the roughest part of my teaching career. Thankfully most of those things changed on their own, but it was a rough couple of years.”
When she’s not helping students learn a new language, Amy is a dedicated mother who loves to go camping with her family and spend as much time as she can with her four-year-old daughter, Bianca. Amy also loves to read and “can talk your ear off about books.” Her favorite book is ‘The Sunbearer Trials’ by Aiden Thomas. In high school, Amy was on the swim team and participated in many extracurricular activities including, band, choral music, and theater/drama. She was also the manager of the boys high school swim team.
Teachers can find inspiration in many areas and Amy found that inspiration in one of her own high school teachers. “My favorite teacher in high school was actually my choir teacher, Annalise Slack, who I am still in contact with today. She was always very empathetic and nurturing of people’s talents, and I try to embody her kindness and passion every day,” she says. Amy mentions that she didn’t decide to become a teacher until after she graduated from college and volunteered at local schools but from then on, teaching became her passion. She chose to become an educator because “teaching is awesome” and she was excited to get to “open up a whole new world to kids through language.”
Another career Amy would consider would be a librarian. “If I wasn’t a teacher, I would be a librarian, because that sounds like another amazing job.”
Students in the Stanley-Boyd School District are in good hands with supportive teachers like Amy Randall whose dedication to the success of their students’ academic careers is an inspiration to us all.
