Making It Meaningful

If all had gone according to plan, Mary Mertsch might be practicing medicine today.

“I grew up the child of a doctor and a nurse, and I always thought I’d be a doctor,” says the veteran English teacher, now in her 15th year at Rivers. There was one catch: During her first year at Georgetown University, she made an unexpected discovery. “I hated my pre-med classes,” says Mertsch. “And I loved English. After one semester, I flipped a coin, and the coin told me I should stick with pre-med. But I said no.”

Clearly, Mertsch’s choice was the right one: Her love of literature and her passion for teaching it are evident. “English is a way of understanding myself better, and the world in which we live,” she says. “For me, they are melded together.”

As far back as her own high school days, Mertsch was forming ideas about education. “My senior year of high school, I took a philosophy class. I had an amazing teacher who introduced us to the work of John Gatto,” the author and teacher well known for his critical take on American public education. Gatto’s views aligned with her own: “I didn’t and don’t like the idea of education as jumping through hoops, doing things that don’t matter, doing homework that felt disconnected from something meaningful,” says Mertsch.

After college, Mertsch earned a masters’ degree in education and went on to teach at a public high school. “I loved it,” she says, “but I decided to go back to grad school to earn a PhD in English and education.” As a doctoral student, she taught college students in English and teacher education, but her heart remained in secondary education. “High school kids have a vision of how the world should be, and they haven’t given up on it,” she says.

She spent a year living in Germany with her future husband, a German native. “I was supposed to finish my dissertation,” she says with a laugh, “but I got distracted.” Upon the couple’s return to the U.S., Mertsch taught briefly at St. Johnsbury Academy in Vermont before pursuing a position at Rivers. “When I interviewed here,” she recalls, “everybody seemed so happy. I remember thinking, ‘This can’t be real. They’re putting on a show.’ But I’ve found that it’s a place where my colleagues and I look forward to coming to work each day.”

Beyond her passion for English, Mertsch is a certified yoga teacher who brings her expertise on mindfulness into the classroom. And she has long served as advisor to the student Gender Sexuality Alliance, supporting

LGBTQ+ students and their allies on campus.

This year, she has taken on another role at Rivers that resonates deeply. Mertsch is now director of new faculty development, helping to guide and mentor Rivers teachers as they navigate their first year at the school. Mertsch explains, “We meet once a week to check in, discussing various topics in education and sharing our own educational philosophies and practices.” She also visits classrooms to observe her new colleagues in action. Mertsch loves the role and the learning opportunity it affords her: “Watching my colleagues teach is the best professional development I’ve ever had.”

The position, she says, reflects the interest she’s had since her teen years. “It goes back to my senior-year self in high school,” says Mertsch. “That’s really when I became passionate about education: what it should look like, and what it can look like.”