Class of 2019 Alumna Pursues Love of Teaching and the United Kingdom

“I've been teaching ninth grade math,” said Sophie. “But I’ll also be covering ninth grade Spanish when world language teacher Julie Sanza goes on maternity leave. It’s been fun seeing things from the other side, but it’s also been strange calling teachers like Mr. Christman by their first name. That said, whenever I see Mr. Izzo, I just can’t call him Bob.”

While Sophie said she loves teaching at Hamden Hall, she is setting her sights on London.

“I’m looking to move back to Scotland or England, as a teacher, for the next academic year,” explained Sophie. “Since my primary and secondary education was in the U.S., I’ve been gathering my certificates of equivalency and high school transcripts for my U.K. job applications.”

Sophie hopes to move to London in mid-August, find an apartment with some friends who are living there now, get settled, and start teaching this fall.

“Schools want new hires with their ‘Qualified Teacher Status’ (QTS), which I don't have yet,” she explained. “So, I’m applying to programs to get that status. It's called a ‘salaried route,’ where you're earning a salary, teaching at a school four days a week, and taking classes one day a week. At the end of 10 months, I’ll have my QTS, and I can begin applying for any available English teacher position at the secondary school level.”

Sophie first became interested in studying overseas when her sister, Emma, was touring colleges.

“I went with her on a few tours,” recalled Sophie. “We went to Edinburgh and saw a couple of schools in London. I thought it was so cool and wanted to apply there, too. The buildings in Edinburgh were just so beautiful. I also liked that you could study the subject of your choice and all these different electives.”

True to her word, Sophie went on to study in both Edinburgh and London after she graduated from Hamden Hall.

“I did my undergrad in English literature at the University of Edinburgh,” said Sophie. “The second year was during Covid, so I was home, but the third and fourth years were great. I then ended up going straight into an English literature master's program at King's College London.”

Sophie did some acting, theatre tech, and stage managing at Hamden Hall with Charlie Alexander, Lisa Daly, Karl Gasteyer, and Michael Smith. Ever the theater fan, she also studied Shakespeare at King’s College London.

“They had a partnership with Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London," recalled Sophie. “I had half of my classes at King's College London and half at the Globe. They also gave us some free tickets, so we got to see Macbeth outdoors at the Globe on my first day at school and I remember seeing Othello inside the San Wanamaker Playhouse in London during the winter.”

Sophie also studied a number of plays for her bachelor’s and master’s dissertations.

“For my B.A., I focused on the way love is portrayed as a mental illness in early modern drama, and I analyzed Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, ’Tis Pity She's a Whore, and The Maid's Tragedy," recalled Sophie. “Then, for my post-grad, I studied the expressions of queer desire in sonnets and letters from the Elizabethan to Jacobean eras. I looked at letters from King James to the Duke of Buckingham; sonnets of Richard Barnfield, Shakespeare, and Amelia Leonard; and letters of Constance Fowler to another woman, which can be analyzed through a queer-theory lens.”

While Sophie has ties to the United Kingdom, so do her parents - meaning that a move may be in the works for the whole family in the not-to-distant future.

“My dad grew up and studied medicine in the U.K., but he did his residency in New York,” said Sophie. “That's where he met my mom. He’s an oncologist at Yale New Haven, and my mom was an oncology nurse, but my parents are also planning to move back to the U.K. He will still work as a doctor, and I think my mom will look for local jobs wherever they end up. A lot of my mom’s family lives in Ireland, and my dad has one sister in the U.K. and one in France, so this would be a chance to be closer to them.”

Sophie’s older sister, Emma, lives in New York, but frequently goes back to the U.K. because of her college connections.

“I think my sister said that if she has kids in a few years, she would want to raise them in the U.K.,” said Sophie. “It has a better quality of life with work and vacations. Even entry-level jobs get something like 25 days of vacation. Plus, they have much longer maternity and paternity time off than in the U.S.”

“So, I think all four of us might end up over there.”