Palmetto High School is filled with many wonderful teachers, although there are definitely ones that stand out. The teacher chosen to spotlight is English teacher Mrs. Enneking. She was chosen because she actually attended Palmetto High School herself, and now works with students taking the AICE Lang 2 and AICE General Paper courses. I started by asking her why she wanted to become a teacher in the first place. Mrs. Enneking responded, “That’s a really great question, I had some really good teachers in high school, especially English teachers here at Palmetto. English class is what made me want to come to school every day. I didn’t always see myself being a teacher, I actually went to grad school for a little while to become a mental health counselor. I feel like I found myself throughout teaching, USF had a good program and I could transfer my undergraduate degree, it all seemed to work out”. Here at Palmetto, the opportunities are endless. This story proves how you don’t need to have everything set at once. Palmetto High teachers needed their time to grow as well to figure out their true passions. 

I further asked Mrs. Enneking “What gives you inspiration as a teacher?”, she laughed and discussed “I love Twitter actually. Everything is Linguistic blogs, podcasts, and especially puns. There is a whole community there that gets me super pumped to teach my students as well as stay up to date with research, I love it. Although what truly keeps me going is defiantly seeing the look on my student’s faces when they learn a new concept and can apply it, that’s what makes it worth it”. 

I concluded the interview by asking if Mrs. Enneking has any advice for students here at Palmetto High who might be struggling coming back from online and adjusting to a year with COVID precautions. She replied, “It can be difficult to get into the swing of things this year for sure, it will always be another day with one foot in front of the other. I can say there will always be issues we’re going to run into, but we have to roll with it the best we can, everyone at Palmetto is here for you!”. 

Some facts about Mrs. Enneking are her favorite color is black, she has two dogs, a rabbit, and two beautiful kids. Thank you, Mrs. Enneking, for being our spotlight!!