About us

Signorina Reardon - Ciao - My name is Kate Reardon and I am so excited to be a part of the Nipmuc Italian Department. Years ago, I sat in my 9th grade Italian 1 class and completely fell in love with the Italian language and culture. I studied Italian and Education at the University of Rhode Island. While at URI, I studied in Florence, Italy for a semester which is one of my favorite places in Italy. After college, I decided to move to Italy for a year to be a nanny for an Italian family. When I returned from Italy, I was lucky enough to find this fantastic job at Nipmuc Regional High School. For my masters degree in Italian, I attended Middlebury College for three summers to complete that degree.

At Nipmuc, I enjoy leading groups of students on international trips. Visit our travel page to see past trips and find out where we are going next.

Signora Blackburn - Ciao tutti! I'm Lauren Blackburn and it's my pleasure to be part of Nipmuc's World Language (and Italian) departments! My path to becoming an Italian teacher was a bit unconventional, but exciting all the same. After signing up for Italian 1 in 9th grade (to avoid having Spanish class with my twin sister), I instantly fell in love with Italian language, culture, music and literature. I knew I had to find a way to center my college and career goals on Italian. After majoring in Italian and Spanish at Boston University (including a semester in Rome), I set out to use my language skills in the "real world". While working in educational travel and importing Italian foods certainly allowed me to use and expand upon my knowledge of Italian and Spanish, I found I had the most fun at my volunteer "job" in the evening (teaching ESL to adults in my community). In 2013, I made the decision to become certified to teach and have been at Nipmuc since 2014. My favorite part of teaching languages is witnessing students make unexpected and exciting connections with new cultures, people and languages!