As a student it is important to have a teacher you can count on. Someone you can rant to, get advice from. Someone who will make you feel seen, heard, loved. At Clarence, one of those teachers is Ms. Rzepka. 

Ms. Rzepka (silent R) started her teaching career as a teacher at Alden High School, where she graduated, and has been teaching at Clarence since the fall of 2023. She teaches 11th grade English classes, and will have been teaching for three years this coming fall. When Ms. Rzepka came to Clarence, started doing interviews and meeting her colleagues, she said it was a truly welcoming environment and that she has amazing support systems. 

Ms. Rzepka has been able to create a welcoming environment for all her students. Whether it be sitting in the comfy chairs in the corner, putting up accomplishments on the “fridge,” or just talking about how everything is going, Ms. Rzepka’s students always have the chance to feel safe and seen. 

However, being a new teacher always has its challenges. Ms. Rzepka says that teaching is hard because you never know what’s going to happen. Every student is going through something different every single day, and Ms. Rzepka tries her best to remain mindful. The difficulty in teaching for her is navigating between maintaining high expectations while being open to what people may be struggling with. This is an important quality of Ms. Rzepka- open mindedness. 

“I try to be very open minded … and very understanding;” she says, “keeping an open mind and not being quick to judge is something that I try to do because you never know what people are dealing with.” 

Outside the classroom, Ms. Rzepka has a passion for dancing; she combines her love of dancing and teaching by being a dance instructor at South Buffalo Dance Academy. “[Dancing],” she says, “is kind of a family thing.” Ms. Rzepka has been dancing since she was three years old and her mom has been teaching there for 30 years. The reason Ms. Rzepka loves dancing is because it provides her a nice escape while also being able to work with kids, choreograph musicals, and be a part of shows. Ms. Rzepka says her favorite show at the moment is The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and she enjoys shows that have a lot of dancing, like Newsies and Tarzan. 

Someone who had an important influence on Ms. Rzepka in high school and helped her become the teacher she is today was her senior year AP Lit. teacher, Mr. Currin. “Mr. Currin saw everybody as somebody who has value and has something important to say,” Ms. Rzepka says. He was very involved in all of his students’ lives and treated them with genuine positivity and sincerity. Ms. Rzepka carries those very same traits in her life and her teaching. 

Two pieces of advice Ms. Rzepka would give to students based on lessons she learned are “give yourself grace in everything,” and to not take everything you do so seriously. 

Ms. Rzepka assures her students that being a teenager is difficult; there is a lot of change happening and so much to process. You can’t expect yourself to be perfect in everything; instead, give yourself credit for the effort you’re making. 

The most important thing to accomplish is to set aside time to be a teenager–“give yourself a chance to be a kid!” Life is too short to be so caught up in everything you have to do. Give yourself the time to embrace where you are at, and simply enjoy.