Melanie Arensdorf has been at the Potosi school district for 10 years and has taught many students. Some of those students include me and some of my classmates. Seeing her previous students go on to do bigger and better things, she feels old, but more so, very proud of all her students and how far they have come. She has always looked forward to her students going on to do great things in life.
There are many things Mrs.Arensdorf enjoys about having been a teacher for this long. Mrs.Arensdorf stated, “ I love seeing the look on students’ faces when an idea finally clicks, or when they finally start to get something, and when they get excited about learning something new or doing something.”
On the other hand, Mrs.Arensdorf has done something else instead of teaching. She went through all four years of college and ended up graduating as an interior architect before she went on to become a teacher. When she got out of college she started work as an interior architect at a local firm for about six months. It ended up not being for her.
She worked at a school in Dubuque, Iowa for a year and a half, and loved it. She then realized she should be a teacher. After that year and a half, she went back to college at Drexel University in Philidelphia and got her education degree. She went to Philidelphia because her extended family lived on the East Coast, so she knew that she wanted to head in that direction. One of Mrs. Arensdorf's roommates from college was going to vet school in Philidelphia, so that was another reason why she wanted to go get her education degree in Philidelphia. While she was in college, she was working at a school in Philadelphia called the Springfield Literacy Center, teaching kindergarten. Right after Mrs. Arensdorf graduated with her education degree, her sister got engaged, so she knew that she wanted to move back to be close to her sister and her family. She decided to move back to Dubuque and started looking for a job in the area.
In 2013, she came to Potosi and started her career as a special education and reading teacher. She helped small groups of students with their reading skills and any other skills that they struggled with. After two years, she started teaching kindergarten, and she did that for six years. Then Melanie moved grades and started teaching 4k, and is now in her second year in that position.
Now that Mrs. Arensdorf has seen many of her former students move on and graduate high school, she wants to keep seeing her students who are still in the school district graduate and accomplish many more things in life.