Griffen, Shauna

Hello my old (no intentional reference to our already oft-mentioned age) friends. Oy, how to sum up the last 20 years with wit and style? The kids just left the building and my thoughts are already on to next year, so I figured I'd better get to this now before I close shop here.

After our PHS graduation, I went to BYU where I majored in History and Biology teaching. I had the overwhelming opportunity to study history in the Middle East for a semester and was able to serve a mission in Germany. Upon returning from there, my heart was drawn more towards keeping that language alive than in dissecting frogs and collecting bugs and mold specimens. I changed my minor to German and fortuitously walked into a History and German teaching position at Spanish Fork High School just after I graduated from BYU. I've spent the last 13 years at SFHS teaching history and German, coaching girls basketball and softball and advising the student government. I went back to school in 2000 and completed a Masters in Education degree. It's been a wild, crazy, fun ride here, with highlights that have to include the opportunity to travel with students to Europe. Chaperoning small town kids in the beer halls of Munich...priceless! The pinnacle of this chapter in my life has been being named at Teacher Fellow for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, with the charge to help other teachers more effectively teach students about the Holocaust and genocide today.

In the past few months I was hired on as the Social Studies Department Chair and Mentor teacher at Maple Mountain High School, a new school opening up on the Spanish Fork-Mapleton border. I also took that big girl step and purchased a house in this little Spanish Fork farm town, where the only thing bigger than the trucks is still the hair. I get my regular kicks performing and competing with the local chapter of Sweet Adelines International, and am headed to Nashville in October to compete with them on the International stage. Yup, I'm pretty much happy as a clam and have a wonderful life.

I'm hoping to make it to the picnic to laugh with everyone at our graying and receding hairlines.Hope you're all taking care of you and your's-

Shauna Griffen