Erin Walsh Suchecki, Bromfield Class of 1999, has come full circle. She is now presiding over her own classroom at Bromfield, working to pass on her love of reading and writing to another generation of students as the new seventh-grade English teacher.
Interviewed last week in her tidy classroom just before the students returned, Suchecki said she was looking forward to the start of classes, and is excited to be teaching back in Harvard.
“I loved this system…people here seem happy to be here—it’s contagious!” Suchecki said.
She particularly likes teaching this age group, and specialized in middle school English when she studied for her masters in arts and teaching at Simmons College. Early in the program, she was required to observe a middle school classroom, and asked Bromfield English department head Karen Bucholc if she could sit in on classes in Harvard.
“I saw sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade classes—I loved it. It’s a great mix. You can have fun, and you can also have great discussions and writing from them,” Suchecki explained.
She came to teaching after several years exploring other options. Upon graduating from Bromfield, Suchecki went to Boston College, majoring in communications and women’s studies, and graduating in 2003. She went to work in the office of Larry Summers, then president of Harvard University, and was there during the storm of controversy over his remarks about women and science. At the same time, she studied for her master’s in writing and publishing at Emerson College, getting that degree in 2005. It was only then that she settled on teaching as a profession, and applied to the Simmons program.
Suchecki finished her teaching degree in December of 2006 and immediately got a job filling in for an eighth-grade English teacher who was out on maternity leave in Carlisle. After that teacher returned, Suchecki got a job teaching eighth-grade English in Hudson last year.
She heard from Bucholc in the spring that there would be an opening at Bromfield, with the retirement of middle school English teacher Joan Larason. Even though it was hard to leave Hudson after only one year, Suchecki leaped at the chance to come back to Harvard, she said.
After being hired here, Suchecki had the opportunity to spend a day in the classroom with Larason last June, when the students had an end-of-the year party at the beach. It gave the two teachers time to go through the classroom books and supplies and to help get the room physically organized for a new teacher.
“She left behind a lot of resources,” Suchecki said, adding that she’ll be assigning many of the same books that Larason used, such as Where the Red Fern Grows and The Diary of Anne Frank. She also plans to emulate some of Larason’s teaching techniques, such as having students critique each other’s early drafts of essays, “so they’ll come to me in more polished form, hopefully,” she said. With 103 seventh-graders’ writing for her to review, that is no small matter.
When asked about her outside interests, Suchecki laughed and said teaching pretty much fills her time. When not immersed in teaching, she enjoys reading and writing, and spending time with her family and being outdoors. However, she anticipates little free time as she adjusts to her new job. In fact, she has already warned her new husband and former high school sweetheart Dan Suchecki, Bromfield ’98, not to expect any heavy-duty housecleaning from her while school is in session.