Ms. Quinn joins the Friends Academy community from her last position as an 11th and 12th grade English teacher at White Plains High School. In her upcoming roles here, Ms. Quinn will be both a member of the FA English department, and a dedicated track coach for the winter and spring seasons. When interviewing Ms. Quinn, she expressed many aspects of this new environment that she is excited to interact with. 

For starters, while Ms. Quinn has had the opportunity to coach basketball in the middle and high school levels, she has not yet gotten the opportunity to coach track. Nevertheless, when asked about her relationship with running, Ms. Quinn answered, “running has probably been the thing that has been the longest strand in my life,”. Just as Ms. Quinn is excited to coach track for the first time at the high school level, as a member of the track team myself I am equally as excited to learn from someone who is so passionate about the sport. 

From an academic standpoint, Ms. Quinn states that compared to her previous teaching experiences, “the best change that I’ve seen is the class size,” feeling that she, “can actually interact with kids multiple times a class,”  in turn building personal relationships that “impact learning in a positive way,”. Not only is Ms. Quinn correct in the impact of these small class sizes, but she brings up an aspect of education at FA that I feel we often take for granted. 

At a Quaker school where the Quaker principles are central to how we learn, the small community that we are so lucky to be a part of comes in combination with these principles to create a sense of compassion. Ms. Quinn realizes that,  “the spiritual element of being together and trying to feel grounded, posing queries about huge world events helps us understand that when we share space together we share the weight that would individually be on our shoulders.” When we are able to come together as a community in gatherings such as meeting for worship, community members are heard and uplifted. The FA community is lucky to have a teacher that will work to take advantage not only of this privilege, but all of the other distinct ones our school has to offer. Welcome Ms. Quinn!